Xbox Runs Its First Legal Homebrew App

PineGreen writes: "As Michael Steil, the Xbox Linux project leader says:'On the Xbox Linux website, you can download "linuxpreview," an application that runs on modded Xboxes and is completeley legal, because the XDK was not used for development, and it does not contain any Microsoft code.'. See the X-box logo and Tux on the same screen. More information here."

Comments

Hey, Linux running on x86?

[ObviousGuy]

What a colossal waste of time.

Think how many Linux drivers could have been written for as of yet unsupported hardware for all that effort.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[domninus.DDR]

Why would you use linux on consoles? cheap hardware? Xbox doesnt even have a keyboard Ive seen yet.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Pig Hogger]

What a colossal waste of time.

It's not if it annoys the beejeesus out of Microsoft...

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can just plug in a USB keyboard into the USB joystick port.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Hassan79]

What a colossal waste of time.

I don't think so. There was already Linux on a christmas tree last year :-)

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[ObviousGuy]

Oh I didn't say it was some sort of paradigm-shifting time-wasting activity. Slashdot has simply set the bar too high for the next paradigm shifter.

I just meant that it was a colossal waste of time (though not to be compared to posting on Slashdot, such a comparison makes this hack seem on par with curing AIDS or solving world hunger).

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem with you dweebs. You think it's some kind of holy war between Linux and MS. MS can care less. Yes they assessed it as a threat and in return they are looking for ways to improve their product. Meanwhile Linux is just running around copying what has already been done with windows. Things like winex and crossover plugin are all counterproductive. It shows that natively Linux programmers can't create anything in the same class as professional windows apps so instead they focus on getting ways to run Win apps on linux. Also KDE is nothing but a bloated Windows desktop clone.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Craig Maloney]

Actually I think several unsupported drivers were coded for this effort... It's called the XBox (in total).

Why get all pissy with people who are enjoying themselves and are coding something that could potentially useful? I'm sure folks made similar claims when Linus rolled out his first kernel. "Why a new kernel? What a collosal waste of time! Think of all of the effort that could have been put into writing something for (insert favorite OS from 1993)

That's OK, though. All of us are short sighted in our lives. I used to think the same way about KDE and GNOME. "What collosal wastes of time" I used to think. Fortunately those very talented programmers didn't listen to the naysayers. Now I don't scoff when someone ports Linux to different hardware architectures. Hey, it's their life. Let them have fun with it.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[ObviousGuy]

As for the hardware, there isn't anything new on the box except for the graphics chip and in this hack they don't seem to have done much changing of that driver (or OS, for that matter).

I don't disagree with what you said, but I think that such blind optimism in regards to new hacks must be tempered. There must be some point at which one must be able to differentiate between something good and something that is merely a waste of time. You wouldn't say to someone who has a PhD in Physics that they were doing a good job if they decided they wanted to prove Kepler's laws of planetary motion. It's simply something that's already been done, the amount of insight that the person will contribute to the whole of physics will be minimal. It is at this time that you ought to tell them (assuming you had the authority, which in the Free Software arena means everybody) that their time could be spent doing better things.

Hey, it's their life, why don't we encourage them do something worthwhile and chastise them when they do something lame?

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the USB ports is standard, so you could also plug in digital kamera, printer, mouse etc.
I think the x-box would be great for schools with linux on.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well your whiney posts are a "colossal waste of time", so why don't you quit posting complaints about the accomplishments of other people, get off your ass, and do something worthwhile. Nobody wants to hear you cry like a baby.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[ObviousGuy]

In what sense do you find them whiny?

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[pigeonhed]

You right a colossal waste of time. Perhaps if we organized into a huge corporation and had someone with a huge ego running things we could slowly take over market share and then crush all who oppose us. Then we could slowly destroy all innovation and force our corporate viewpoint upon all others. opps yeah it has already been done.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

opps yeah it has already been done

Such a small mind to think that one can't crawl to the top of the economic ladder because someone already sits at the top. I think this explains a lot of why Open Source programmers are a noisy, whiny lot. They simply see themselves as inherently inferior and incapable of advancement.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

XBox for schools with Linux on. Are you on crack??? Moron! Troll on elseware!

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, you poor angry person.

You need a hug.

(((( YOU ))))

hth

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Craig Maloney]

If someone seriously wants to reprove Kepler's laws, who am I to stand in their way? Hey, if they can come up with refinements to the ways those laws work, or heavens forbid disprove them in some unique way, do I have the right to tell them to knock it off? True there are many unsupported devices out there, but you can't make the corollary that time spent on the XBox would be better spent elsewhere. Who's to say the people who worked on the XBox port would have spent their time supporting something like an NVidia card or some obscure Tulip ethernet card? I highly doubt it.

Instead of chastisting those involved for wasting their time, why not encourage the hacking. Hacking keeps the community alive, and spurs other to "do one better". OK, so now we have Linux on a modified XBox; why not get Linux on an unmodified XBox? How about running Apache? Maybe even get SDL ported over to the XBox? Who knows what the limits are? Something that may appears as stupid now may spur off something incredibly clever down the road. Remember, it took many people tying wings to their backs and bikes before someone figured out how to get those various hacks to work right. Who knows if someone down the road might benefit from this. It might even be you/

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem with you dweebs. You think it's some kind of holy war between Linux and MS

Oh stop crying like a little girl. Just grab yourself a hot, steaming cup of shut the fuck up.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[darc]

Actually, no, the USB ports are not really standard. The plugs are a different shape,and have an extra wire. You can put stuff in it, but you need an adapter. Besides that, its the same, yes.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this explains a lot of why Open Source programmers are a noisy, whiny lot. They simply see themselves as inherently inferior and incapable of advancement.

Uh, ok. Tell that to John Carmack, who happens to be an open source programmer and a pioneer in the 3D gaming industry. No advancement? Kiss my ass, microserf.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

A very liberal attitude.. nice to see

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah but according to the post that started this subthread, it would be futile to attempt to become a graphics pioneer because Carmack already did it and became quite rich.

Also, I fail to see how Carmack is part of the Open Source community.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

TOLD!

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[ObviousGuy]

If someone seriously wants to reprove Kepler's laws, who am I to stand in their way?

This is the job that advisers do all the time. Alex Chiu-types exist because they never had an adviser tell them that they are doing crackpot science.

Encouraging such wastes of time helps no one.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Prior Restraint]

Encouraging such wastes of time helps no one.

I disagree. Yes, it qualifies as re-inventing the wheel, but that sort of thing might lead to the prover having a better understanding of astronomy. You almost seem to be suggesting that once person A understands something, it's unnecessary for anyone else to ever understand it; they should just accept it as truth and move on.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

RiTE on.

PC's are almost down to 200$
Quit wasting time on console ports. We need forcefeedback drivers for the Sidewinder joysticks damnit!!!! :)

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[ObviousGuy]

I'm certainly not suggesting that everyone give up stop studying something and take the results of a previous finding on faith. I'm saying that an adviser's role is to point obviously gifted people in productive directions. Hence the PhD candidate/Kepler's laws of planetary motion analogy.

In Open Source development it is ultimately the users that take the advisory role. It is up to the users to encourage development of new, useful, and interesting things. Developers are by no means tied to the opinions of users, but that does not relieve the users of the responsibility of rewarding developers that do insightful things and providing (perhaps biting) criticism when developers seem to stray from developing useful things.

Linux on x86 is nothing new. This hack isn't even Linux on x86. It's an x86 executable on an x86.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Pig Hogger]

That's the problem with you dweebs. You think it's some kind of holy war between Linux and MS. MS can care less. Yes they assessed it as a threat and in return they are looking for ways to improve their product. Meanwhile Linux is just running around copying what has already been done with windows. Things like winex and crossover plugin are all counterproductive. It shows that natively Linux programmers can't create anything in the same class as professional windows apps so instead they focus on getting ways to run Win apps on linux. Also KDE is nothing but a bloated Windows desktop clone.

Microsoft doesn't give a flying fuck about it's products quality; all it cares about is it's bottom line. If it changes some product somewhat, it's not to improve it, but just to make it sellable to millions more dopes so it can rake-in more dough.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If god existed, he wouldn't give any more shit than you gave about the E.Coli you just shitted this morning."

Unquestionably the worst sig ever. Really, what the fuck were you thinking?

So if there were a god, he wouldn't give more of a shit than the bacteria I shitted today. That seems to be the gist of it. Does this mean anything, is this a profound revelation? A fourth-grader's attempt to call god a doo-doo head?

Or really, are you just trying to get on to that list of the worst sigs on slashdot?

You sir, are a degenerate of the worst kind. May you be hung by a meat hook inserted in your anus.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[ericmc42]

What the hell is your definition of improve? If people like the changed version better, then it *is* improved. Dumbass...

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Suppafly]

Thats the great thing about free software, no matter how much or little effort someone else puts towards it has absolutely no effect on effort your could put towards it. Stop complaining and write some linux drivers, otherwise shut up and continue to leech off of the work of others.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah they probaly get really mad when they start earning cash from linux users who buys their xbox.

bill probaly laughs all the way to his bank

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

Much like the project in the article, your comment is redundant and unnecessary.

(that's 9 biters!)

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

the reason i get pissed is that microsoft gets more people who wanna buy their xbox the more apps there are for it. ie they work free for microsoft

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Alex Belits]

They lose money on hardware, expecting to get it back in game licensing. Each Xbox without games means hundreds of dollars loss.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Anonymous Coward]

IF people were choosing the changed versions because they preferred them instead of having the licenses pulled out from under them, you might have a point.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Pig Hogger]

Hey, dope, improved doesn't mean better. In microsoft's case, it means more bloat, sucking more CPU and memory, more crash-prone.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[Eil]

What a colossal waste of time.

Meanwhile, you're posting to slashdot....

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[ericmc42]

Fuck off bitch. On my computers I run Linux and OpenBSD because I don't like bloat, ms bullshit, etc... The harsh reality though, is that most people like the 'features' microsoft adds. If they're happy, who really gives a shit. Happy user, more money in the developers pockets... everyone wins.

Re:Hey, Linux running on x86?

[ericmc42]

wtf!? MS doesn't pull licenses. They simply sell new versions of software. If you don't like their new software, don't buy the shit. God knows I never would. I use linux/OpenBSD because it works for me and is a cheaper alternative. If my buddy like windoze and has the cash for it, then who really gives a shit. He actually likes the new 'features', MS makes money and everyone wins. Bitch.

$200,000 Award???

[donnacha]

So, do they win the $200, 000 Award?

Re:$200,000 Award???

[Anonymous Coward]

They've barely done anything except NOT use Microsoft's SDK for making a simple program to run on the XBox. It's a proof of concept but not even a solid first step...

Re:$200,000 Award???

[waspleg]

actually it said a quarter of a million

which is $250,000.. and being sourceforge i wonder if /. staff had any hand in it

Re:$200,000 Award???

[donnacha]

actually it said a quarter of a million

No, you're wrong or, rather, the original /. report was somewhat prone to journalistic hyperbole.

From the actual Xbox-Linux.SourceForge.net Press Release:

A total of US$ 100,000 will be awarded for the completion of each of the two projects.

But please don't be hard on yourself about this, I actually find it quite a strain to be right all the time.

Re:$200,000 Award???

[waspleg]

really? i would have thought being puerile would have been the bigger strain..

Re:$200,000 Award???

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think that being a flaming homosexual would be your biggest strain.

Re:$200,000 Award???

[donnacha]

really? i would have thought being puerile would have been the bigger strain.

Well, both are taxing. But I keep soldiering on.

Re:$200,000 Award???

[Anonymous Coward]

not with this new space-age lubricant xkro. i saw a large black man split a navy man in two and slide half a mile down the street before his penius (and most of his midsection) through the wonders of friction stopped him.

Re:$200,000 Award???

[chrisw15]

So, do they win the $200, 000 Award [slashdot.org]?

No, part of the requirement was that it must run on an UNmodded XBox...

Re:$200,000 Award???

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh.. yeah, except for the modded bios of course.

Re:$200,000 Award???

[Erasmus Darwin]

"part of the requirement was that it must run on an UNmodded XBox..."

Yes, but the rewards were segmented into different requirements. I believe only $100,000 was ear-marked towards getting unsigned code to run on an unmodified Xbox. The rest of it covers "easier" things such as kernel and XFree drivers.

Closer

[skydude_20]

Ooo... That much closer to the sweetness of $200,000.

But I'm sure that they're all in it just for the experience....

Needs signing from Microsoft?

[bolind]

From the page:

>This is the first legal homebrew application!
>Of course you will need a modded Xbox.
>Microsoft, could you please sign this application?

What does this mean? Does an unmodded Xbox contain a list or some other sort of checking mechanism that only allows certain programs to run on it?

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Fjord]

Xboxes, like other disc based consoles, check the discs they run to make sure they aren't pirated copies. Otherwide, anyone with a DVD-RW could make a copy from a local Blockbuster (or download an ISO off the net but blockbuster is more convinient). Unfortunately, this means that programs that you make and burn to disc won't run because it won't pass the check.

Mods remove the copy checking so that you can run backed up or copied discs.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes thats about it! You mean you thought MS is going to let you run the programs you want without getting $$'s?

We should all be affraid because MS will be bringing this to a PC near you soon.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

The X-box has an encryption chip that will only allow trusted code to run on it.

Its standard practice in consoles since the Atari days. But as Nintendo learned, there's no law against circumventing this to run unauthorized apps.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[donnacha]

Otherwide, anyone with a DVD-RW could make a copy from a local Blockbuster (or download an ISO off the net but blockbuster is more convinient).

I'll never understand the American fascination with Blockbuster! How is it more convenient to drive down to Blockbuster, pay $5 or whatever it is, drive back home, copy the disc, drive back to Blockbuster to return the movie and then, at long last, drive back home? If you have a decent connection, why not just type in a name into Kazaa Lite and press enter? It's not like you can't do other things during the few hours the download takes.

And all this driving around! If you're going to pirate movies, at least do it in an ecologically sound way.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Daytona955i]

I agree, in a perfect world it would be easier. But how many programs have you downloaded that turned out to be incomplete or just plain wrong? Ever download a movie and find out it's not the right one? It can be very difficult at times to find the right one. Also a few hours to download a movie vs. a few minutes to drive somewhere to get it. It all depends on how patient you are. If you want it now go to blockbuster (or similar movie/game rental place) if you don't want to leave you computer just download it... It's all a matter of personal preference.
-Chris

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[linzeal]

I don't know about you all in E-land but I don't have an encyclopedic memory of every movie made so I go to places where I can peruse at leisure. I go independent, never owned a blockbuster card never will and usually walk there. Emeryville is only lke 2 miles square anyways. E-land is filled with awesome public transportation and entire areas of cities cordoned off from vehicular traffic, we have little things like that here but not much. Stop with your snobbery ;)

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

why not just type in a name into Kazaa Lite and press enter?

Kazaa only works on Windows.

The quality of about 50% of pirated movies on the net is unacceptably poor. Unwatchable.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[jfedor]

Its standard practice in consoles since the Atari days. But as Nintendo learned, there's no law against circumventing this to run unauthorized apps.

Ever heard of the DMCA?

-jfedor

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[twoslice]

It was an attempt at humour! as in sarcasm??? and by the way the line was damn funny!

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Fjord]

It comes down to assurance of quality. Downloading off of Kazaa can be a real let down and for files of this size can also take several days (because the people who have them sign on and off). I live a block and a helf away from a Blockbuster, so maybe I should say *for me* it's more convinent, but I'm not the only one I know who prefers this method: my exroomate (at a different place very far from a blockbuster) would rent about 20 games at a time and then copy them and return them the next day. Maybe downloading 1 ISO is easier, but 20 is a pain.

A funny story: the another roomate in the same place was into ISOs on IRC. Someone in the channel had a rare Japanese market game ISO. My roomate asked the guy what he wanted. The roomate then copied his windows swap file to whatever.iso (where whatever was the name of the game the guy wanted). They then swapped "ISOs". A day later our firewall was DOSsed. We figure the guy didn't take too kindly to the trade :)

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[91degrees]

No. You see, the thing that most people don't quite understand with the DMCA is that it does not cover all modification of any hardware ever. It merely prevents people from circumventing a mechanism that exists purely to prevent illegal copyright infringement. While the law may be over-reaching, it is not that over-reaching.

For the DMCA to apply, MS needs some evidence that this will allow pirated osftware to run, and that this hack has been done in order to run pirated software.

Unauthorised apps are not neccesarily pirate apps, and in this particular case, copying the application has been explicitely encouraged by the copyright terms and conditions.

If someone were to extend this hack to allow pirated software to run, then Microsoft would have a case. Until that time, they have to live with it.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[taviso]

sure about that?

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's just me, but on my 1500/128 DSL line, something CD-R sized takes a couple days to complete on Kazaa. (Usually because there's only 2 other people in the world that have what I want.)

And blockbuster happens to be only 2 blocks away, so I walk, "rip" my movies to good ol' SVHS, and return them before Kazaa is even a quarter done. Score one for analog technology!

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[jfedor]

I'm talking about the mod chip that's needed to run this program, not the program itself.

If the courts believe that DeCSS's primary purpose is copying DVD movies illegaly then I think it wouldn't be hard to convince them that the primary purpose of a mod chip is to run pirated games (which just happens to be true, BTW; not that I think they should be banned just because of this).

IANAL and I may be wrong. If I was right then Microsoft would probably go to court already. But from what I understand the Xbox mod chip is a fairly new thing (but if it was possible then Sony might have done something to outlaw Playstation mod chips, which are known for years).

-jfedor

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Zach978]

Does that work by using Gimp to make that image, or is there a known way to get Kazaa going now (cause I want it! ;) )?

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[91degrees]

Yeah, they could argue that, but this is another stage removed. DeCSS could be used to copy a DVD. It was designed to allow people to copy a DVD to a hard disk. Whether the intended use of this copy was legitimate or not, it was something the MPAA could argue is an infringing copy.

This hack hasn't yet been shown to allow copying of games, and it is possible that it will not allow this. I guess that MS could demonstrate that an essentially identical hack will allow pirated games to run, but this would require them to demonstrate that the hack also applied to pirated games, and that running Linux on their hardware is not a fair use exception to the DMCA.

Actually, I think that they will avoid this, because they may end up being developing a circumvention method themselves in doing so.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Frank of Earth]

>How is it more convenient to drive down to >Blockbuster, pay $5 or whatever it is, drive >back home, copy the disc, drive back to >Blockbuster to return the movie and then, at >long last, drive back home?

Sometimes it's good to see other human beings. After going to blockbuster, you don't feel so guilty hacking away at your computer all day. Personally, I hate blockbuster and rent from the local guy. You know the local guy, because he's the one with the louvered doors going into the XXX section...

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[The Creator]

> Xboxes, like other disc based consoles, check the discs they run to make sure they aren't pirated copies.

That may be the official reason. But i think it has more to with making sure that everyone who makes games for your console pays a royalty.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Jace of Fuse!]

Does an unmodded Xbox contain a list or some other sort of checking mechanism that only allows certain programs to run on it?

Something I haven't seen anybody mention, but something that I've read and only partially understand, is that each disc contains bootable information that is encoded in some special way. Making custom software encoded in the same way might would not be so difficult, but I believe it would make such software a violation of the DMCA, just another crutch Microsoft can fall back on if they have to.

So, in a way, yes, the XBox DOES contain some such other checking mechanism that only allows certain programs to run.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Palarran]

Erm, DeCSS was designed to allow playback of DVD data. Copying can be done all day and night without ever thinking about DeCSS. It's when you want to play the DVD, original or copy, in anything other than a licensed player (hardware or software) that you need DeCSS. And it happened because there was NO licensed player for Linux.

So the analogy you refute seems pretty good to me. Modification that allows unlicensed media to run on protected hardware, versus modification that allows media to run on unlicensed hardware, roughly.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[neocon]

We are all Palestinians [stinkers.org]

Leaving aside the logically absurd and fundamentally racist content of the site you link to, what are we to take this to mean? That we are all citizens of a totalitarian dictatorship which pays us to send our teenagers to blow themselves up in the children's areas of restaurants in order to distract us from the fact that the only people oppressing us are our own rulers? I guess I don't buy it.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

People like you make me sick. You entered into a deal, one person offered one thing, in exchange for something else, and you backed out. If you don't like the idea of trading for 'warez', not many people do, you could have said "Sorry, don't trade." or told the guy that you didn't have anything to offer, and saved yourself both a lot hassle. Why bother giving him the iso? it's just a waste of his bandwidth, and yours. IRC is full of morons and lamers like yourself and your friend, we don't want you on our network, so next time you want something, you can go out and buy it. Maybe then you'll respect the balance of idiots like yourself, and the people who are offering items.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope a Jewish fascist cuts off YOUR water supply and murders one of YOUR children, then.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[His Nastiness]

ummmm..there is no honor among theives. I'm not for a second going to deny that I am a degenerate who has downloaded a warez or two in his day and I am not necessarily proud. Considering that what your'e doing is essentailly stealing it is patently ludicrous to be sickened that someone who was stealing may have filched on a deal. I can't count the number of times I downloaded something only to find out that it was mislabeled for the sole purpose of wasting my time. Maybe I shouldn't have been doing it. I don't think you should be looking for paragons of honesty or be surprised by deception and other shiftlessness among those trading warez. Word.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Cynikal]

what about extracting a working "signature" from ms from a legit game and comming up with a working facsimilie (sp) to fool the xbox into letting it run?

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[neocon]

Meanwhile, back here on earth, unlike in your fantasy world, murder-suicide bombers have been killing children by the hundreds in the last two years -- a rate of murder which proportionate to Israel's population is about equivalent of a September 11 attack every few weeks.

And unlike Israel, which has gone out of its way to avoid harming non-combatants, and which even Arafat now admits has not killed any great number of civilians, and those only by accident in pitched battle with Palestinian gunmen who disguise themselves as civilians and hide in residential areas, the murder suicide bombers seek to kill as many civilians as they can.

As for `fascists', here we find ourself observing a conflict between Israel, a free democracy seeking to defend itself against terrorism, and Arafat, a totalitarian dictator who has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews. Just which side are you calling `fascist' here?

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[0x0d0a]

Of course, by the same token, *you* could run out and use a free access P2P network like Napster or GnutellaNet. Few people go to the effort of putting out large garbage files if they aren't getting anything in return.

Besides, the irony here is pretty strong -- someone who spends time ripping people off (warezers) is complaining about being ripped off in the process.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[robhancock]

You can't just copy a DVD video with consumer equipment. Well, you can, but it will be useless because there will be no decryption keys - unless you plan to use a CSS cracker to play it.

Certainly it would be possible to copy the decryption keys along with the DVD data, but that would be quite a bit more complicated an affair..

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[CurlyG]

Not quite - sounds like you've been confused (like so many others) by RIAA scaremongering nonsense. The copy you make of your DVD is exactly the same as the original.

If your DVD player plays the original it will play the copy. DeCSS is needed for a software player to decode any region-encoded DVD, not just copied ones.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[psamuels]

what about extracting a working "signature" from ms from a legit game and comming up with a working facsimilie (sp) to fool the xbox into letting it run?

The signature most likely (i.e. "if Microsoft isn't a lot stupider than they look") contains a cryptographic checksum. That would preclude any attempts similar to what you describe. Cryptography discovered, and solved, this problem perhaps 25 or 30 years ago.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[91degrees]

The space for the keys is already burned on consumer DVD writers. Hence the copy is not exactrly the same, and will not play.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Cynikal]

yes, but much like a serial code for your warezed games, etc, i'm sure someone could crack it, and come up with a fake signature generator for whatever software you want to boot onto the xbox, right?

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[psamuels]

yes, but much like a serial code for your warezed games, etc, i'm sure someone could crack it, and come up with a fake signature generator for whatever software you want to boot onto the xbox, right?

It's one thing to create a key generator for something like FLEXlm (whose license keys are fairly short - possibly because a once-popular way to get a license was via FAX, which forced the customer to type in a random hex string - so the shorter the better) or DVD CSS (intended for embedded devices, so they needed to minimise the hardware cost for decoding, which must be done in real time). It's quite another thing to crack a protocol which is designed to run on a 700 MHz 32-bit CPU in a non-time-critical path (only during boot, as opposed to during all DVD playback).

In other words, unlike many cases, Microsoft wasn't forced to use short keys or fast algorithms. They could quite easily have used something which is not computationally feasible to crack within the next 50 years.

Although, given Microsoft's track record with regard to security implementations, one can always hope....

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Bert64]

Which is why you should check the file once you have the first couple of mb`s, that`s enough to see the first minute or so of a movie, or to verify the volume name and content filenames of an iso.

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Cynikal]

reading the few replies i've gotten, only one saying comes to mind: "wise is he who knows what can and can't be done before he even tries"

sure they *could* have done that, but what i'm looking is for someone to say "hey, lets try that and see what happens"

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because Microsoft isn't always a lot stupider than they look, doesn't mean they can design a perfect cryptosystem.

For example, the PS2's licence track includes a hash checked using a (it turns out critically bad, but that's irrelevant) digital signature algorithm.

That's not the easiest or most effective break, though, because they took reasonable primitives and used them wrongly: unfortunately for them, the hash only signs the directory, probably in a misguided attempt to make the licence checking more efficient by not having to read the loaded executables and hash them.

Try getting an unlicenced PS2 release, like Blaze's DVD Region Free, and you'll see that it has the same directory structure as Crazy Taxi - and the same licence track and signature, too - but the files are all null bytes, except the main executable which is simply the DVD Region Free executable padded-out to work. Result: the disc boots on an unmodded PS2.

Cryptosystems are harder to design than cryptographic algorithms. Even if the PS2's signature was sound, it was an ineffective cryptosystem because it didn't sign the right thing.

One thing, on a related topic, which I think a lot of people missed is that Palladium doesn't really refer to a general-purpose computer. Even Microsoft understands that would be a dumb thing to do:

http://www.microsoft.com/issues/essays/2002/06-03d igitalrights.asp
(Kudos to Crypto-Gram for the link)

In particular, a great quote from that: "Anti-piracy measures are self-defeating if, in tightening security, they impair technology's usefulness or burden users." ... never thought I'd hear that from Microsoft... ;)

No, Palladium was referring much more closely to a system which runs only trusted executables, with close data controls. They swiped *this* idea from the NSA distros of Windows, with the secure clipboards et al, and the NSA (and from there, the US government) is clearly (at least, to me) one of the intended audiences for Palladium. The other being a games console, or something amazingly console-like - the Xbox, or perhaps its intended successor. The patent doesn't describe the system they used, but it describes what they had in mind when they were designing the Xbox, and what they came up with by learning from the mistakes they made when designing the Xbox.

In short - XBox executables are signed, using something similar to Authenticode, by one key, generated by Microsoft. There are no countersignatures, as replay attacks (think disc duplication facilities), although they allow perfect piracy, are moot for the purposes of getting your own code to run as the executables would be an exact copy of, say, a game executable (possible you could find an datafile-related exploit in one that ran untrusted code, but moot for the purposes of the contest as distributing that - copyrighted - signed executable on a Linux bootdisc would be illegal without a licence from the copyright holder, which they damn well wouldn't grant).

I know of no key revocation or replacement mechanism that wouldn't stop legit games working as well. Even MS wouldn't be that terminally dense (see above). The obvious way to attack this system is, in fact, the obvious way to attack Palladium -- steal the signing key.

Alternatively, break the public key algorithm or perform a pad-based hash collision on a single bootstrap executable, whose sole purpose is to chain an untrusted binary. You probably think this couldn't be done. I know differently; this could be done, maybe once or twice, if the result was important enough to risk revealing that you could do it (the easiest way not do reveal this would be to simply, consistently and plausibly claim that you leaked the key). No-one's ever going to do it on a message, as that would just be thick, but a signing key with such a long lifetime is a big fat target... a big fat target that'd cost more than $100,000, so no-one's going to do it this time. :)

Time to case the joints where copies of the signing key are held, and burgling the easiest, or leaking the key via an insider, and plan what to spend that $100,000 on, not to mention what you'll do with your new LinuXBox. ;)

And even that's assuming Microsoft haven't made any critical mistakes, and despite the care and attention they have recently lavished on anti-piracy and licence control measures, given that this is Microsoft, it's safe to assume that they probably made a gigantic balls-up somewhere in there.

I'm only not entering because I just Don't Do Contests, and because I know I'm not as good at hardware RE - or, indeed, burglary - as some of the realistic contenders.

Linux Set Radio: Future

[grungebox]

Think of all the gaming possibilities now available to X-Box developers! 'Shell Scripting Xtreme!' or 'Marvel vs. Capcom vs. Vi vs. emacs!' I hear in the next Halo your standard gun fires tarballs and RPM's.

Waste of whose time? Yours?

[Anonymous Coward]

Think how many people actually use that unsupported hardware and would want to run linux, and compare that with the number of xbox owners who want to run linux. If the former is such an overwhelming majority, then why didn't they write the drivers? Or do you think there's some central "Linux Cabal" that control everything that gets done Linux-related. The only waste of time here is people who can't code trying to dictate priorities to people who can.

X-box Linux app

[inode_buddha]

Hah! I hope these guys just happen to have tickets to the LinuxWorld Expo. That wouls be a great place for a demo....

Re:X-box Linux app

[Tony.Tang]

Heh...

In their first demo, they just have a screen showing the xbox logo and tux.

In the second demo, they have dmesg.

SUHWEET.

Re:X-box Linux app

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who missed it, Microsoft is going to have a booth at the LinuxWorld Expo. It would be so sweet if the organizers could fly these guys in and have them demo their hack at a booth beside Microsoft.

Waste of Time

[cyberlotnet]

My only question is Why?

Why waste your time getting linux to run on a Microsuck product?
Why waste time dealing with closed hardware?

If these people really wanted to do the linux community any good there time would be better spent developing a linux gaming console on everyday stock hardware.

I mean really lets think about this..

Do I want to
1. Run a webserver on a Xbox?

2. Run games on a linux box?

Which one makes more sense?

Re:Waste of Time

[terradyn]

Don't you realize the potential of having a cheap web server farm? these boxes are worth 450 or so in hardware and you can get them for less than 200 now. You'd save a huge amount of money using these as linux boxes.

Re:Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

yah xbox lost money when they were selling them at $400... now u can get them for 199$ with ethernet card/10gig harddrive (theres 1.7 gigs unpartitioned. No one knows why.) dvd-rom drive, and other stuff. Think of how much webhosting prices would go down.. then watch what microsoft does to stop it lol

Re:Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

They are doing it because

a) big hats made out of money

and

b) If they don't do it, NetBSD will, then they'll be sorry.

Re:Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm.. Not really.. By the time they've linux running on one of them in a legal manner, the hardware is outdated again. What's the next step? Starting developing again for the Xbox2, which I'm sure has a complete new anti-copy, piracy, unsigned software running mechanism.

I totally agree that this is a wast of resource, which could be spend on some more important tasks.

On the other hand, It's also nice for your own program experience :)

Re:Waste of Time

[totallygeek]

My only question is Why?

I have often wondered why Linux has been ported to just about even processor under the sun. I have thought it was such a waste because that intelligence could be making Linux better for platform processors more supported. However, I have seen this as a great way to draw interest to Linux. It has become an attention getter -- I mean, who has a Microsoft Windows watch? Plus, most of the people working on these side projects are strongly focused on other Linux ventures, and these make nice breaks in their daily grind of coding. Most of all, though, it revives that hacker spirit some have lost -- make something work against all odds; learn the system in and out; and, do the impossible!

Re:Waste of Time

[cyberlotnet]

These boxes would make shitty servers..

Intel 733 processor with only 128k Cache
Only 64 Megs of ram
5400 RPM Drives With only 10 gigs active
No Standard VGA Port for a monitor

So all in all this would make one SHITTY server, not worth the time and effort for most people..

You would be better off going to walmart and picking up a Lindows computer and using that as a server before you bothered to touch this.

Any geek with the skilz to use this for a server could just as easy build his own system for not much more and it would perform ALOT better as a server then this would.

Re:Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of activity may become very usefull if/when the palladium thing hits off.

Re:Waste of Time

[oyenstikker]

Because they want to. They are using their resources to do something they want to do. They don't owe you anything. Open source hackers don't exist to make free software for you. They exist because they like doing it.

(I can almost hear you all gasping.)

To all of you hackers that have influenced and contributed to progams that I use: Thank you!

To all of you hackers that spend your time doing things that I find utterly useless: Have fun!

Re:Waste of Time

[chabotc]

Well thats a simple question to awnser. Depening on your intrests you might want to:

1) Make a microsoft sponsored linux box / workstation (they loose money on the hardware, so what could be sweeter!)

2) Make a microsoft sponsored DVD / MPG / DivX / MP3 player

3) Make a microsoft sponsored Top set box

4) Make a nice quiet, cheap, fast enough, linux web / email / ftp server / etc, sponsored by microsoft!

5) All of the above? ;-)

Personaly i can not wait. The xbox is nice and small, and still relativly quiet. I think my first use for it will be to hook up a (usb?) network to it, and use it to play movies and mp3's from my server on my tv, saving my self the hassle of having to drag around notebooks or dedicate a big, ugly noisy pc to that function.

Then hook up a nice wireless usb keyboard w/ intergrated trackball, and do a full screen galeon to create a nice web surfing / topset box experiance from the comfort of my couch.

Then maybe hook up all the posible home automation gimics to a nice interface thru the xbox / tv, and be able to control my house from my tv?

Then, install some tv cards on my server, and pipe its output to the xbox .. posibly extend with those nice linux mpg recording programs to make my own tivo style setup

Also, I wonder if my current colocation facility will accept xbox's ?

Man, the posibilities are endless, for a little under 300 bucks (and going down) and the sheere thought of microsoft sponsoring my linux projects, it's worth every bit of effort these developers are putting in to it!

Re:Waste of Time

[handsomepete]

"If these people really wanted to do the linux community any good there time would be better spent developing a linux gaming console on everyday stock hardware."

Isn't there some saying about free software developers? Something about them only developing something they have an itch to do?

The fact of the matter is that not *everybody* wants to better the Linux community and not *everybody* wants to program what everyone else wants them to program. The simple answer to the question:
"Do I want to
1. Run a webserver on a Xbox?

2. Run games on a linux box?"

...is that it doesn't matter what you want unless you're writing the code. If they wanted other people telling them what to do they'd go to work. Remember that this is a hobby for most; they are not servants at our command. That being said, I would also like to see someone developing a Linux based console for games on everyday stock hardware, but I realize that there's nothing I can do about it. I'm still patiently waiting for that perfect emulation console...

Anyways, this isn't intended as a flame. This is just the facts as I see them.

Re:Waste of Time

[Psiren]

Why am I wasting my time writing an email client when so many already exist? Because I enjoy it, and have learnt a lot from it. If you're not programming for money, what other reasons do you need than those?

Re:Waste of Time

[ozbird]

My only question is Why?

Why waste your time getting linux to run on a Microsuck product?
Why waste time dealing with closed hardware?

Because it's there? :-)
Less flippantly, one of Linux's strong points is the ability to put otherwise wasted hardware to good use. I think that pretty much sums up the X-Box - why cripple a perfectly good PC to use as a game console when there are other purpose-built alternatives?

Remember The Goodies motto: "Anything, Anywhere, Anytime."

Re:Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

AMEN!

Re:Waste of Time

[cfish]

Exactly! For the fun of it. Not many people believed that Linux would have made it in the mid 90's, but everyone was happy to waste hours and hours on it anyway.

I feel that this is the biggest difference between the open source spirit and communism - that an open source developer only serves his/her own interest, but a communist is contributing to the group. The former motivates; the later does not.

If you can smash pie on Bill Gate's face as a hobbie, wouldn't you be happy to spend hours and hours doing it?

Re:Waste of Time

[Glytch]

It's the price, stupid. It's only US$200. Also, not everyone needs a server farm rivaling Google.

Re:Waste of Time

[Sir Joltalot]

Well for $200 USD, it's not bad. No it's not gonna serve slashdot, but it'd easily do for an internal e-mail server in a small office (20 people) or an internal web server or small fileserver or something. Last I heard the Lindows boxes were still considerably more than $200 USD.

And think - with $1000 USD you could cluster 5 Xboxes and that might let you do some heavier things.. although I'm not sure if a cluster of 5 would be any better than a server you could buy for $1000; quite possibly though.

And it's not necessarily just for servers either. An Xbox with Linux would be useful for other things too; a central box in your living room where guests can check their e-mail or surf or what have you. And surf with very nice browsers too.

Meh, just my 2bits, as Taco would say.

Re:Waste of Time

[duren686]

The xbox is nice and small, and still relativly quiet.

Which XBox are you talking about?

Re:Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Another question, why waste time re-typing ideas already expressed in a previous post? See first post.

Re:Waste of Time

[DickBreath]

My only question is Why?
Why waste your time getting linux to run on a Microsuck product?
Why waste time dealing with closed hardware?

If these people really wanted to do the linux community any good there time would be better spent developing a linux gaming console on everyday stock hardware.

I mean really lets think about this.
Do I want to
1. Run a webserver on a Xbox?
2. Run games on a linux box?
Which one makes more sense?

Let me restate your argument from a different point of view.

Why waste time getting an open source OS to run on PC hardware?
Why waste time dealing with an OS that has no useful software for it?

If these people really wanted to do the PC user community any good their time would be better spent developing shareware on everyday stock Windows OSes.

I mean really, let's think about this...
Do I want to:
1. Run Spreadsheets/Wordprocessing on Linux?
2. Run network servers on Windows?
Which one makes more sense?

Re:Waste of Time

[ceejayoz]

It's smaller than any of my computers...

Re:Waste of Time

[timftbf]

What have VGA ports got to do with servers?
Servers don't have monitors attached. Servers
don't even have video cards, on a good day when
the vendor has managed to think outside the
limitations of the PeeCee or you've bought
servers based on a real architecture. Even if
you're stuck with something that insists on video
for a console, you only use it once to install,
and not again until it crashes hard.

And underspecced? For what kind of server? For
personal web pages (and your friends' personal
web pages, and your family's and...), for example,
Celery733, 64M and 10GB is total overkill. You
can run that sort of server off a P90 quite
successfully - an Xbox, if it's hacked to run
Linux, could happily do the web, DNS, mail and
probably countless other bits at the same time.

Regards,
Tim.

Re:Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

>> but I realize that there's nothing I can do about it.

Yes, there is: start coding right now...

Re:Waste of Time

[flacco]

These boxes would make shitty servers..

Do you think they would make good web clients?

I was thinking of putting together a cheap diskless workstation for casual web browsing in the study (a la LTSP). It would boot off the server in the basement.

But if I could do the same with an XBox and take a couple hundred bucks out of MS's pockets, all the better!

Re:Waste of Time

[SubtleNuance]

..Except the Communist recieves the same compensation of Personal Reward, Peer Respect and Enlightenment that your Free Software Hacker does.

There is no lack of 'motivation' if you remove $ compensation and move to a collective, democratic and Communist Economy.

Re:Waste of Time

[DrStrangeLoop]

Because they want to. They are using their resources to do something they want to do. They don't owe you anything. Open source hackers don't exist to make free software for you. They exist because they like doing it.

Of course, in this case the motivation could very well be the 0.2 MILLION DOLLARS which will be given to the people dealing successfully with this piece of previously closed hardware.

-strangeloop

Re:Waste of Time

[MsGeek]

The AC's right. Palladium is basically the XBox phase 2 or phase 3, so if someone figures out how to boot Linux on an UNmodded (not modded, folks, just like the challenge rules) XBox we have a Linux kernel that will boot a Palladium-hobbled PC-like entertainment device.

This is going to be very important in the years ahead.

Re:Waste of Time

[WNight]

The XBox would be a great system for MAME. It's a DVD player. And hell, it's essentially a PC so it'd be easy to write software for.

It's also dirt cheap.

I'd pay $200 for a MAME box alone, a DVD player included in that would be gravy.

Re:Waste of Time

[nzhavok]

personally I don't like the 64M limit. If this could be modded to 256 or 512 I would be very happy having it as a server/pc but with 64 it's very lightweight.

Re:Waste of Time

[toopc]

>Don't you realize the potential of having a cheap web server farm? these boxes are worth 450

Go to pricewatch and put together the closest PC you can that approximates an Xbox. It costs no where near $400 (closer to about $275) and it'll come with a decent sized hard drive, standard USB ports, standard VGA out, and you don't have to remove and solder anything from/to the motherboard.

As a academic challenge, getting Linux on the Xbox is a worthwhile endeaver. As a way to hurt Microsoft, it's a complete waste of time. Few people will bother, and those that do will end up costing Microsoft hardly anthing at all.

Not to mention, Microsoft will no doubt find some way to tweak the Xbox that screws up all your hard work.

Re:Waste of Time

[fferreres]

"(they loose money on the hardware, so what could be sweeter!)"

Are you SURE? I don't mean the biased "total cost figures" that include R&D, law, PR, etc. I mean the raw cost of production and distribution.

Because if you are wrong (as i suspect) it would mean Linux hackers giving they hard earned money to MS pockets.

Re:Waste of Time

[fferreres]

Well, if all OS writers liked to exlusively program XBill game variants, we'll end up being forced to use Windows or MacOSX.

So you claim is true, but it doesn't help OSS as a movement. We need to have a complete set of tools. Sure, you can and will do whatever you want, but it's the people that actually write what's NEEDED that get my respects.

If they enjoyed programing said apps or if they didn't, but just though they HAD to contribute that piece in order to make OSS viable as an alternative to closed source system, is irrelevant. The important thing is that thanks to them I have software that I can use. I don't think Stallman had lot of fun porting all the boring stuff in GNU. He just though It was needed, he had a mission. On the other hand, Linus not doubt enjoys kernel hacking. They day he gets bored, he'll quit (as he has already stated).

So the important thing to keep in mind is that what's important is that the apps beign produced are usefull. And only those people deserve credit. Everything else well...I think it's irrelevant (ie: good for you!)...

Re:Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't remove R&D, law, and PR from the equation! If MS is losing money, it doesn't matter WHY they're losing it.

The financial model is that profits are made via game sales. So, buy an Xbox, but don't buy Halo.

Re:Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

> Don't remove R&D, law, and PR from the equation!

Yes, DO remove them. Because these costs are almost fixed. R&D wont cost them one cent more only because you bought 10 xboxes more.

Re:Waste of Time

[reverius]

Let's total up the components (all prices taken from Pricewatch at the moment, they do change though):

Pentium III 733mhz: $89
Pentium III motherboard: $31
ATX Case + 300w power supply: $24
GeForce 3 TI 500 graphics card (if anyone can approximate the XBox card to a closer match, do so): $127
(Audio built into motherboard)
10 GB 5400 rpm HD: estimated $35 (not listed on Pricewatch)
64 MB SDRAM: $11
100 Mbit ethernet card: $6

Total system cost: $323

This total cost is considerably more than the Xbox is currently priced.

Linux on the Gameboy(tm)

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, what I would like to see is ELKS ported to the Nintendo(tm) Gameboy(tm). It must be possible if it's been ported to the C-64.

Re:Linux on the Gameboy(tm)

[AKA da JET]

Splam. C-64 emulator for GBA.

Re:Linux on the Gameboy(tm)

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking of the original Gameboy(tm) actually, but hey, if ELKS will run on the GBA(tm) using that emulator, a native port should be excellent! Infact, surely the GBA could handle "real" Linux, (I.E. not ELKS). Interesting!

Re:Linux on the Gameboy(tm)

[The Pi-Guy]

I AM WILLING to try to port something like ELKS to GBC. I do need a link to some source though...

--j

*ducks from the OT*

Re:Linux on the Gameboy(tm)

[Anonymous Coward]

ELKS source code:

http://elks.sourceforge.net/

Not At All a Waste of Time

[donnacha]

What a colossal waste of time.

Hardly. If widespread modding, driven by a quite likely boom in Divx Movie piracy, becomes a reality, Xbox Linux could, no doubt much to the horror of "real" Linux folk, become by far the most popular form of consumer/home Linux.

Sometimes success can arrive in unexpected forms.

Re:Not At All a Waste of Time

[Anonymous Coward]

You have strange definitions of "widespread" and "quite likely". Suggest you leave the dormroom every so often for some fresh air.

Re:Waste of whose time? Yours?

[ObviousGuy]

why didn't they write the drivers?

Because they can't code.

Once you advocate the position of "Microsoft bad, Linux good", you have to provide the means to take advantage of that paradigm. By telling users who are wholly willing to use Linux in the mainstream and to encourage others to do so as well that they need to code their own drivers or submit their own bug fixes to teams that ostensibly have their own funding (RedHat, IBM, Cygwin, FSF through begging drives, etc.) you have turned an eager apostate into, at best, a hesitant user.

No one is saying that the people who did this hack don't have the right to their own time, but their actions *hurt* the Linux community by making it appear as Linux developers are more concerned with poking Microsoft in the eye than making Linux better, which this hack clearly does not do.

Price comparision

[cyberlotnet]

733/64MEG RAM 10 Gig Drive XBOX $180 at the cheapest

Pricewatch Total for a
Althon 1.2 chip/Motherboard
128 Megs Ram
20 Gig HD
Case
Cdrom
Network Card
$220

Come on people... Spend $40 more get at get real.. The time/money you save not having to MOD/Play to get linux installed plus the extra power makings using a XboX as a serverfarm just plain stupid

Re:Price comparision

[Imperial Tacohead]

Eh, but it's a DVD-ROM drive, and in a set-top box, that makes all the difference in the world.

Re:Price comparision

[Daytona955i]

Here's why... because they can...

People often ask me why I got a linux kit for my ps2... I only tell them that if they have to ask they wouldn't understand.

Also don't you want to screw Microsoft? In order for Microsoft to make any money (or to break even for that matter) they need to sell something like 30 games per xbox user. (They get about $5 per game) Why? Because they are selling the XBox for less than is costs to make. Now say you can get an XBox and install linux (and not buy any games) and you and your friends all do the same and install linux and have fun with it. Microsoft looses a lot of money because you aren't even buying 1 game for the xbox. Therefore Microsoft looses lots of money on the XBox project and then decide to bow out to Sony and Nintendo. It would finally be a place where Microsoft has failed.

That is what I would do... just to screw MS.

However, those screen shots look kindof hokey and I don't actually see linux booting, just one line at the top. Anyone actually get it to work?

Re:Price comparision

[dcstimm]

dont forget the geforce 3 + video card which linux has drivers for, plus try finding a case that small.

64mb ram is enough to run WindowMaker and any game I can think of (since it does have a good cpu and a nice vid card.

also if you want to play Xbox games you can. probably very simple to dual boot it.

it also has a dvd player you forgot to mention.

Plus not every one wants a server farm of these, I will buy a Xbox when its finished for my "fun box".

Also why are you being so negitve? these guys are doing something that I think is pretty damn cool. I would rather have a xbox running Linux than a Athlon 1.2 POS running linux.

also I was going to buy the Linux PS2 add on for $200, but why buy that when I can buy a Xbox for the same price?

Remember a ps2 is only 300mhz mips and has 32mb ram with a 40gb harddrive.

I would take the Xbox over that any day!!

--Please be alittle bit more open minded.

Re:Price comparision

[PineGreen]

Well, just a comparable Geforce 4 costs about that amount of money....
And belive me, they are doing it for fun, not economy.

Re:Price comparision

[cyberlotnet]

Umm hello MORON.. Read my comment fully... Its talking about the use of this box in a SERVER FARM

DVD-ROM and set-top boxes dont apply here.. DOH

Re:Price comparision

[cyberlotnet]

Again I would like to point out that my price comparision was based on the box being used as a server..

Geforce 3 in a server not needed
More then 64 megs ram is needed
DVD player not needed

Besides there are so many other projects out there that need help, Why promote the purchase of a microsoft product?

Re:Price comparision

[Anonymous Coward]

Er. No. Try:

$35 for MB
$53 for CPU
$25 for case/PS
$50 for HD
$10 for NIC
$38 for DVD-ROM drive
$33 for GF2MX (keep in mind the XBox has a GF3)
$9 for the cheapest sound card money can buy.
$11 for 64MB PC100.
$10 for a dirt cheap, crap, heatsink and fan

$274. You lose. People tend to forget the miscelaneous things, like sound, video, shipping and handling...

Re:Price comparision

[cyberlotnet]

Lets try this again..
1. Check out motherboard combos for discounts
2. Topic was based on being used as a server.. servers do not need a DVD-ROM drive and a GF2MX

3. The price could be even cheaper if you get a integrated mb/video/network card

Re:Price comparision

[Anonymous Coward]

Why promote the purchase of a microsoft product?

Because M$ lose money on each Xbox they sell.

Re:Price comparision

[Anonymous Coward]

That mips CPU OWNS an intel chip at even over twice the clockspeed.

Re:Price comparision

[IXI]

> also I was going to buy the Linux PS2 add on for $200, but why buy that when I can buy a Xbox for the same price?

Because you don't have to sell your freedom. By buying XBoxes you are helping M$ - but they won't help you when they have extended their monopoly to the console market.

Re:Price comparision

[dcstimm]

microsoft loses money on the xbox....

Re:Price comparision

[cfish]

One thing though. Microsoft is losing less than 1 billion dollars on XBox so far. But Microsoft have some 47 billion dollars of cash on hand.

1 billion / 150 = 6,666,666

That is, if 6 million geeks go out, throw in $200 hard earned cash and purchase one Xbox without buying any games, MS will lose about 1 billion, which really doesn't sting much for Bill Gates. However, the mod chip is likely to do hefty damage because you can bet that 1 out of each 2 Xboxes sold will be modded and it signals that the prospect of profit is dim.

Now look at Linux and BSD. No one needs to throw in $200 investment to slap Microsoft in the face.

But then again, a DivX-VCD-mp3CD set top box sounds like a nice idea. When we come up with even more worth idea for Xbox, I hope the hack will be ready.

Any creative method to screw Microsoft in every possible way is satisfying and I root for those Xbox hackers... on the sideline that is. I hope that I can get an Xbox for $5 next year to put next to the Microsoft Bob CD.

Re:Price comparision

[duren686]

Why? Why do people propagate this?

Buying something (read: money going to the seller) will in no way negatively impact (read: money going away from the seller) the seller. Microsoft loses money on every XBox they produce. They recoup some of that money when they ship units to stores. (money goes to them from the stores) When someone buys a unit, the stores receive money, and they see that there is demand for more XBoxes, and order more from MS (read: more money goes to MS)

In other words, not buying XBoxes will make Microsoft lose money. Imagine that, a non-selling product not-generating revenue.

Re:Price comparision

[martyn s]

You make it sound like Microsoft decided exactly how many Xboxes they are going to make throughout it's lifetime. There are people out there who buy Xbox to play games. For every Xbox someone buys for a linux server farm, microsoft has to make another Xbox for the people who play games. Buying Xboxes for purposes other than playing games (without buying any games) hurts microsoft financially, it's as simple as that. Get with it.

Re:Price comparision

[Anonymous Coward]

That is, if 6 million geeks go out, throw in $200 hard earned cash and purchase one Xbox without buying any games, MS will lose about 1 billion

No, they won't. Economics at work!

Re:Price comparision

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, try again

Re:Price comparision

[darc]

Left out the Geforce 3 didn't you? Lets see, what's cheaper now? $101 - GeForce3 (pricewatch) So your system is now $320. Perhaps a renderfarm?

Re:Price comparision

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody's been feeding you a line of crap. What the hell are you going to run on that mips chip? Pretty much nothing. On an x86 chip however, software is plentiful.

Re:Price comparision

[Richard_at_work]

And how long do you reckon it would be untill MS mods the xbox itself so this cant happen? And dont moan then about MS being tight, as all you want to do is kill them, and all they want to do is survive.

Re:Price comparision

[Richard_at_work]

Buying Xboxes for purposes other than playing games (without buying any games) hurts microsoft

and how long would it be until this infantile course of action would hurt the people who bought the xbox for the proper reason? quite quickly when MS stops production, and games companies stops producing games for the now dead platform.

Re:Price comparision

[ceejayoz]

loses money, but gains market share, which makes them more money in the long run...

Anyways, with ten billion a year in profits, this hardly makes a dent, even if all the Slashdotters in the world bought one

Re:Price comparision

[IXI]

The more you sell, the less you lose. That is the rule of mass production.

And even if M$ loses money on each xbox they sell, they will gain because they lose less than not selling them at all. And they have already invested in the development and bought hardware or contracts.

Last but not least they won't sell them that cheap for a long time. In fact, as hardware gets cheaper by the day they just don't have to decrease their prices for some time to get into the profit zone.

So buying Xboxes to run Linux you must be fscking stupid or incredibly greedy.

Re:Price comparision

[burnetd]

But it increases the sales figures, you know the ones they show when getting software produces to create exclusive software, which sells more XBox's.

Re:Price comparision

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that that's the point.

Re:Price comparision

[Prior Restraint]

And how long do you reckon it would be untill MS mods the xbox itself so this cant happen?

Whenever XBox 2 is slated to come out, I would guess.

Re:Price comparision

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody's been feeding you a line of crap. What the hell are you going to run on that mips chip? Pretty much nothing. On an x86 chip however, software is plentiful.

Have you ever heard of source code and a compiler? You must be a windoze user.

Re:Price comparision

[Cynikal]

plus...

mouse, keyboard, monitor, video card, sound card, speakers....

check those on pricewatch and tell me how much more its gonna be now (you can slash the monitor if you really want to connect via a tv.
i'm sure its gonna be a little more than $40.. not to mention you gotta have one of those funky game controlers

- did i leave anything out?

Re:Price comparision

[Iscariot_]

Yea, but how many people would buy an XBox for use with running linux and NEVER buy one game? Come on. There are a few good games out there.

Re:Price comparision

[sonamchauhan]

> Pricewatch Total for a
> Althon 1.2 chip/Motherboard
> 128 Megs Ram
> 20 Gig HD ...

Hey, it doesn't add up like that :-). What about the graphics card? IIRC, the XBox has an Nvidia NV25 chip that is slightly better than a GeForce 3. So...

NV25 $300 (?)

Also, IIRC the XBox used AMD's hypertransport (?) bus, and that speeds up graphics a fair bit too.

Yoda FAQ

[Cave Dweller]

(from http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/faq.php)

"Is your project illegal? Doesn't forbid the DMCA all this?
The DMCA forbids circumventing copy protection, but but this is not our goal. We develop an alternative operating system for the Xbox gaming console. [...]"

Doesn't forbid... Right.

Re:Yoda FAQ

[windex]

That's most likely a result of 2am web page design. Any unix developer type who makes a quick webpage for his application at 2am is going to have the webpage come out with as many bugs as his 2am code, but HTML dosen't whine when you typo like C does. :)

Re:Yoda FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Cave Dweller says: "OOOOH A TYPO ON THE WEBSITE! After I am done masturbating to goatse.cx I will post a comment on Slashdot telling everyone about it and how fucking gay I am!"

You are such a whiny little cock. Who the hell cares except you? If it is such a big deal tell the webmaster.

Not necessarily

[DABANSHEE]

There are companies that make cd cloning machines, which do all the copying in hardware, no software exists to decipher the track. IE the reader just records into ram a streaming image of the bips 'n blips which is streamed into the burner at realtime (or virtually realtime) & recorded onto the new CD, well something like that.

So the copy is exactly the same as the original, Consequently such hardware CD cloners work even if the original CD is formatted in the HFS, BFS or any other file system type. Even CDs that have been partitioned (want of a better word) & have 2 ISO images burnt onto it, or even both ISO & HFS images on it will burn fine. To the machine its just bips 'n blips.

I've used one of these machines myself. There would be absolutelly no way that a Xbox would be able to tell a original from a cloned CD. As there's no anti-copy protection by-pass measures built in, & as they cant tell the difference between copyrighted & non-copyrighted CDs, owning/making/selling such machines does't break any laws, even if the user does.

Re:Not necessarily

[Fjord]

Hmmm. I'd have to see one of these work. My understanding is that the original discs have something on them that regular discs don't have. In this way original playstation or xbox discs aren't any kind of standard (on purpose), so this machine would have to be tooled specifically to make these discs. It's not a matter of burners not being able to make copies of the data (they can make them perfectly fine, as evedenced by the fact that backups work on a modded console), but that the discs have something special that the console checks for, probably outside of the data range.

Re:Not necessarily

[DeadMeat (TM)]

In the case of PSX discs, they are intentionally burned with errors. Assuming your CD copier doesn't barf on the errors, your CD copying software will probably correct them for you. Then when the PSX boots, it reads the disc, finds no errors, and refuses to run the game.

It doesn't take a special drive to copy PSX discs -- just software that will do raw copies of CDs, a CD/DVD-ROM drive that can do raw reads, and a CD burner that can do raw writes (which is most of them nowadays). You don't need special media, either, aside from the fact that some PSX models have lasers that "like" the material of some CD-Rs better than others.

I'm not sure about the X-Box, but it probably has a similar copy-protection scheme. IIRC it also has the requirement that all software be digitally signed by Microsoft to try to stop unlicensed games. (To further discourage unlicensed game-making, legit X-Box DVDs are also burned "backwards" -- that is, instead of going from the inside of the disc to the outside it goes in the opposite direction. I'm not sure how, if at all, this affects copying, since I doubt a raw copy cares what direction it's being done in.)

Re:Not necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

To further discourage unlicensed game-making, legit X-Box DVDs are also burned "backwards" -- that is, instead of going from the inside of the disc to the outside it goes in the opposite direction.

I thought only Nintendo did that, and the reasoning behind it is that you can read more data faster off the outer edge of a disc than you can off the inner edge.

Re:Not necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

owning/making/selling such machines does't break any laws

That's what you think. Welcome to DMCA-ville, felon.

Re:Not necessarily

[morgus morphus]

Only the X-Box uses two-layer DVDs, not CDs, and there is no way (and I seriously doubt it is physically possible) to burn a two-layer DVD.

Re:Not necessarily

[Fjord]

From the site you linked to:

I have a game console which uses CDs. Can I copy these CDs with CloneCD?

Sure you can copy them! But the question should be - will they work? And the answer is: No. CloneCD does not disable the boot protection found on console CDs. As we already said, CloneCD does not modify the data it reads or writes in any way.

However, if you have modified your game console already to accept backup copies, copies created by CloneCD will work. There is even a nice side effect: Almost any *additional* copy protection (apart from the boot protection) will be copied, too. Backup copies created with CloneCD will therefore work better than copies created by a different program. However, CloneCD was designed to make Safety Backups of PC-CDs, not for game console CDs.

It still appears to me that there is extra protection in addition to the errors you describe, and this is what the mod chips disable. The same is true for DVD based systems AFAIK.

Re:Not necessarily

[Citizen of Earth]

There are companies that make cd cloning machines, which do all the copying in hardware, no software exists to decipher the track. IE the reader just records into ram a streaming image of the bips 'n blips which is streamed into the burner at realtime (or virtually realtime) & recorded onto the new CD, well something like that.

This sounds a lot like "disk nibblers" from back in the Commodore-64 days. The circle is complete.

Re:Not necessarily

[Citizen of Earth]

It's not a matter of burners not being able to make copies of the data (they can make them perfectly fine, as evedenced by the fact that backups work on a modded console), but that the discs have something special that the console checks for, probably outside of the data range.

So you just need to make your Commodore-64 disk nibbler scan all the way out to track 40.

Xbox-Linux Mailing List

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like someone else subscribes to the mailing list.

Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[AftanGustur]

What kind of world/reality are we living in, where your own software can be anything else than "legal" ??

Hehehe

[Gabber Piet]

wuzzah

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[Anonymous Coward]

The same world where smoking crack while pregnant makes you an unfit parent.

Completely legal?

[ultraright]

How exactly is running code on a modded XBox completely legal?

Re:Completely legal?

[Sloppy]

Because anything that isn't illegal, is legal. (Unless the law has some equivalent of Godel's theorum?)

Re:Completely legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

It only takes the strength of argument to turn an activity from legal to illegal. Stretching laws to cover unspecified activities is the grand pastime of the U.S. Court system.

Re:Completely legal?

[Sloppy]

Then I can't wait to see what they come up with.

"Your honor, today we are going to show that the defendent's activity of running third-party software on our XBox, is clearly a violation of the Endangered Species Act as well as Bigamy laws in most states."

Re:Completely legal?

[duren686]

Running the software isn't the illegal part. The (potentially) illegal part is modding your Xbox.

This doesn't make running the software illegal in itself, but since it is necessary to do that to get the software to run, it effectively makes you do something illegal.

A comparison would be that someonw took your discman, and you murdered him to get it back. Having your own discman isn't illegal, but murdering someone to get it back from them is. (Note: Yes, there are many flaws in that analogy, but what analogies on slashdot aren't flawed?)

Re:Completely legal?

[alannon]

My guess would be, RUNNING the program itself is not legal, since you need to mod your X-Box to do that, and you 'agreed' not to do that when you opened the box (yes, the whole idea of that is under legal dispute right now), but distributing the program itself is completely legal, since it does not use any copyrighted Microsoft code.

Re:Completely legal?

[Zebbers]

why would you knowingly use a totally flawed analogy...it's not even close.

Re:Completely legal?

[BitterOak]

Yes, but if the only way to run the code you're releasing is to do something illegal, then I think a case could be made that you are inciting a crime, which is in itself criminal. Even speech loses First Amendment protection if its purpose is to cause "imminent lawless action." If you must do something illegal to run software then I really can't see how the software could be considered "legal".

Re:Completely legal?

[dossen]

If I own the hardware, I want to run whatever I damn well please, and as long as I'm not using unlicensed software there are no laws to stop me (that I know of).

Re:Completely legal?

[dattaway]

Ford released their new line of cars, which gets 200MPG, but can only reach speeds of 80MPH. Technically, there is a way to make Ford's new cars go 160MPH, but their EULA strictly forbids opening the hood for any reason, punishable by 20 years in prison. Doing so could be considered circumventing activity for reprogramming the car. They needed to do this, because their more expensive models feature a software upgrade and brightly colored stickers to make it go faster. You muck around under the hood, you threaten their revenue stream. Many engineers at Ford would starve due to your criminal intentions.

Well, wouldn't you know it, several teenagers who weren't old enough to drive got underneath the hood of their parents automobile while dad was away at work. You see, one family had the high end model, and the other didn't. The kids were intrigued. One thing led to another, and next thing you know they were caught and led to jail. They wouldn't have been caught if it weren't for that spectacular joyride lighting up the street across the town.

The same can be said about an xbox near you. It usually takes a kid about two years to learn enough about a computer system to learn its language and make something useful. Usually, these projects are done by the young who have all the free time in the world. And they would consider it a patriotic duty to be caught too. I remember my first computer, a ZX81. It was 13 at the time and it took a few years before I had the ROM dissassembled and controlling the hardware directly. No documentation, no internet. I'm sure the internet and millions of people from countries all over the world can get together and come up with something.

Re:Completely legal?

[brendanoconnor]

First off, I feel your example is a bit off base. If you agree to the EULA, then there is no grey area to argue in.

I honestly hope someone can get linux to run on the xbox, and then I hope that the people involved try and distribute the software, free or for a price. As soon as this happens Microsoft will take them to court, and be justified as well. If the EULA is on the side of the box, and it says you may not modify the xbox, as well as says you may not run unsigned programs on the ebox, then it pretty much means you cannot run linux on the xbox, or anything other then xbox games legally.

I personally don't think people have a right to buy the xbox to simply run linux on it. It wasn't made for that purpose. If people would use products as such for what they were meant to be used for, the market place, and consumer would be better off as a whole.

Brendan

Re:Completely legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

I once saw a great post on slashdot, unfortunatly I can't remember the author's name. He said something along the lines of "You can put a sign in your front yard warning that all visitors will be raped and murdered. That doesn't mean its legal to rape and murder your visitors." Great qoute.

Re:Completely legal?

[Cynikal]

hehe i had a zx81 when i was 12 or 13 too, but by that time it was akin to a 486 today.. i dissasembled the rom, then bashed it good and looked at all the computer stuff inside....

Re:Completely legal?

[stor]

>I personally don't think people have a right to buy the xbox to simply run linux on it. It wasn't made for that purpose.

There has been times (e.g. camping) when I have needed to tighten an old flathead screw but there was no screwdrivers available so I've used a spoon, for instance.

The spoon was never designed to act as a screwdriver and if it bent I certainly wouldn't expect a refund. However I wouldn't expect the spoon manufacturer to be chasing after me for any reason. I bought the spoon, who cares how I utilise it?

MS is selling the X-Box at a loss but that's their gamble. It may pay off, it may not. That's the way it goes. MS would have understood this from day zero: it would have been an integral part of the plan.

Cheers
Stor

Re:Completely legal?

[f8xmulder]

So according to the EULA, whether car or computer, we can't even "change the oil", to extend the metaphor? Maybe the EULA is not binding, as it does not involve signatures.

Re:Completely legal?

[Junta]

Your argument is so strange and completely orthogonal to the issue at hand.

You are trying to get people to see how this would be valid in a car situation, and why we wouldn't argue with it. The hypothetical kids would have been arrested for speeding and driving without a license. They probably wouldn't go to jail, but to even suggest the possibility you admit that the offenses for which they are being punished would be criminal, not civil (as breaking EULA would be civil). In this scenario they were punished for speeding, reckless driving, whatever.

Let's modify this scenario to say the good car got 200 MPH (radically different Fuel Injection, let's say for sake of argument) but the base model got 5 MPH and they printed on a sticker saying 'by purchasing this car and breaking this sticker, you agree not to tinker with the Fuel Injectors', and stuck it to the driver side door. Now let's say the purchaser buys the car, opens the door without looking at the sticker, and then finds one of the 'good' fuel injectors at a bargain price from a junkyard, opens his hood and replaces it. Now would you expect him to be hauled off or to fined or liable in a law suit? No criminal offense was committed, and the sticker thing wouldn't hold up in court (at least it shouldn't and I believe the same should apply for the ridiculous software EULAs). In the case of the XBox, from what I hear, you don't even need to break a sticker or otherwise in any way at all have to leave any indication that you looked at the EULA. So the argument becomes even weaker.

It's ludicrous to think that breaking a sticker (without witnesses no less!) should constitute a legally binding contract. Clicking through is little better, as the user at least has a better idea at what the purpose of the dialog is, but again there are no witnesses and no unique identifier, making it impossible to ever prove a perpetrator agreed to the EULA themselves.

EULAs are stupid, all of the legitimate things they are trying to prevent are already covered by copyright law, patent law, and criminal law (as far as misuse goes). If software makers get the same priviliges as engineers of physical objects, they should operate within the same restrictions.

Re:Completely legal?

[Junta]

Replace all occurences of MPH to MPG, to make it actually make sense. But the same could go for MPH, so long as you don't break laws after such a modifications.

Re:Completely legal?

[Junta]

Arg, the analogy is not only flawed, but useless, murder was not requsite for the end task to happen. The act of getting the discman back is legal, the murder would not.

In applying the principals to the XBox case at hand, the act of running linux on the box is legal. However, the *possible* offense would be the modding, not how the modding is used. EULA in relation to the XBox is probably not enforcable, but the DMCA may still apply, since the modchip would most likely be viewed as a circumvention device. MS would never pursue someone for modchipping their XBox for the express purpose of running linux, as this would introduce the possibility of the DMCA being shot down (same as when Adobe stopped trying to get that guy). We have a very clear, real set of circumstances in which no copyright would be violated, but the person would be afowl of copyright law anyway.

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[Anonymous Coward]

The same world where smoking crack while pregnant makes you an unfit parent.

Do you miss them ?

Isn't that a contridiction?

[CMiYC]

" an application that runs on modded Xboxes and is completeley legal"

I'm pretty sure the EULA for the XBox hardware states that you can not modify it and that you can only run authorized applications (games) on it. That being the case, how is this "completely legal"? It seems to me that in order to be completely legal, the software would have to have the proper license from Microsoft in order to run.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so, if you are one of the many pimple flled Linux geeks (such as my self) who are under 18, and not subject to those pesky EULA's.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[dattaway]

Simply refuse the EULA and wipe the useless and annoying default xbox software, replace with useful Linux, problem solved. Surely, they didn't make it so easy...

The only thing I would be worried about is a hardware implimented suicide logic bomb. Let's say Microsoft hid a little calendar watchdog that sends the operating system a special interrupt ever so often, demanding a special answer.

I'm thinking about this from the hardware designer's point of view, if they were smart enough to do this... If the software refuses to honor this request, the watchdog would update the death counter. Let's say they made this counter 4 bits long to be forgiving. When it counts down to zero without being reset, the security watchdog knows for sure rebel scum have defeated the imperial forces. The watchdog then simply sends out some low level hardware instructions through the IO ports for every programmable chip. The logic bombs have been set.

To further obfuscate this event, the hardware could have been designed to trigger the event upon the next power up cycle. Once this state is triggered, the xbox enteres a comotose state and is effectively dead. Or is it? Do they have an option for "factory service" to revive these things? Is the bomb reset by placing a certain IO line at an odd voltage level? Or is it permently latched?

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Latch it permanently. Refuse to service it if the toggle has been set.

It's easier to deal with a dozen or three Linux freaks frying their box by refusing to service them than resetting the counter every time the same users hit the limit.

If you're going to hurt your enemies, make it especially painful.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Sloppy]

EULAs are irrelevant.

If you didn't have to sign something (not counting a check or credit card slip or something like that) before the store would turn the XBox over to you, then you didn't agree to the EULA.

If you don't want additional rights above and beyond what you would normally have (such as the right to distribute derivative works), then you have no motivation to agree to the EULA.

EULAs are not compulsory. I can't make you agree to a contract without your consent.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[dattaway]

Ah, yes! Now if a terminator gene is present in the xbox's hardware, we shall find it. It only would further escalate the challenge. This would just make things more interesting and require das blinkenlights toys on the bench: a logic analyzer, wires, emulation circuits, etc... Sounds like even more fun.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[mrmag00]

but you did exchange money for it, which means you agree to any licensing restrictions put forth by the manufacture (eg, if i open it i void my warrenty, whatever), don't you?

of course, nobody said EULAs were legal from the start.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[John Hasler]

"but you did exchange money for it, which means you agree to any licensing restrictions put forth by the manufacture (eg, if i open it i void my warrenty, whatever), don't you?"

It's a physical object. You bought it so you own it. That means you can do any damn thing you want with it. All the manufacturer can do is void the warrantee.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[antirename]

How, exactly, is an EULA supposed to apply to HARDWARE? Sort of like, can Ford require me to buy only Firestone tires when they give me keys?

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your description of a hardware implemented suicide logic bomb reminds me of the battery-backed security code in Capcom(tm) CPS-2(tm) arcade games. Once the lithium battery runs out, the decryption code is gone forever, (except that you can return the unit to Capcom(tm), who will replace the battery, and re-program the RAM, and, apparently, often up-grade the game to the latest revision, all for a modest fee, (it really isn't that much)), and the game doesn't run.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Henry V .009]

EULAs applying to hardware make just as much sense as they do applying to software.

...None at all.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what if someone writes a malicious app that trashes all the xboxlinux machines? Or finds a security hole ina networkable game and kills thousands of "normal" xboxes?

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[HerbieStone]

I guess they could do that. I also guess many have thought of implementing such things into all kind of devices. But there are problems and risks involved for the company trying such a thing.

Especially in litigous America, if only one person finds out that his X-Box was crippled by intention, Microsoft will be in deep shit.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft already does this with their FINE Windows line of software products.

Its called IIS.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply refuse the EULA and wipe the useless and annoying default xbox software, replace with useful Linux, problem solved.

Aren't you supposed to return the product to Microsoft for a full refund if you refuse the EULA?

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

To further obfuscate this event, the hardware could have been designed to trigger the event upon the next power up cycle. Once this state is triggered, the xbox enteres a comotose state and is effectively dead. Or is it? Do they have an option for "factory service" to revive these things? Is the bomb reset by placing a certain IO line at an odd voltage level? Or is it permently latched?

Does anyone else find it funny that this guy took his hypothesis and within a couple paragraphs came to believe it as fact? Then wondered how one could fix it?

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[gmhowell]

Hardware is a product. You bought it. You did not license it. So far, that hasn't been fucked with by Congress.

If things were as simple as 'licensing' a product only for a specific use, don't you think Beretta, Colt, etc. would only license firearms for target shooting and approved game hunting? If this would provide a defense against a variety of lawsuits, they would have long ago done this.

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else find it funny that this guy took his hypothesis and within a couple paragraphs came to believe it as fact

No, but I find it sad you got modded for saying that

Re:Isn't that a contridiction?

[nzhavok]

So what if someone ... finds a security hole ina networkable game and kills thousands of "normal" xboxes?

We laugh. Hard.

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[Anonymous Coward]

I have my crackpipe to keep my warm at night.

- Moderator

Re:Needs signing from Microsoft? QWZX

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a decent connection, why not just type in a name into Kazaa Lite and press enter?

You must have never downloaded one if you think the quality is anywhere near a DVD. It's either a) recorded via "shakycam" in a theatre, or b) uncompressed then recompressed using a much lower bitrate. It's almost impossible to find native DVD data.

How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Peahippo]

This places Open Source on their equipment and that just looks bad for Microsoft. I say "looks bad" in the MSian view of closed technology and monopolistic control of same; kind of an ego thing. Paranoia strikes me, but in such cases of legal precision, IANAL who specializes in corporate software defense.

Is there some way MS can paint the event as an illegality of some sort, just to get some court action? After all, they have the rafts of lawyers, and the geeksters don't, so once again the rare and elusive justice can be mis-served by bankrupting the opponent. How about: placing another OS on the XBox constitutes "intent to violate copyright" since obviously you will be after all those game DVDs. The DMCA allegedly forbids circumventing copy protection, so perhaps all MS has to do is get a judge or jury to believe that these 1337 h4xx0r5 were aiming in that direction.

Just curious. I never ask myself if I'm being paranoid -- instead, I ask if I'm being paranoid enough.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy. Microsoft owns the BIOS. Running anything but the embedded operating system means that steps have been taken to circumvent the system. The hackers then become liable under the DMCA for both creating and using a circumvention device as specified under the Act.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you think something's wrong with your thinking if the first thought that pops into your head is how you can justify the legality of your actions?

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[dattaway]

So, am I being a DMCA violator for taking the system apart and putting it back together like it wasn't intended? I ask this question, because many people have done odd things like take apart a perfectly good new or used car and assemble it into some crazy artistic, but functional creation to show off to their peers. The same could and will be done to the xbox.

Or does the DMCA only apply to programmable devices? Thanks to the xbox, will it now be illegal for me to take apart my programmable air conditioner and modify it to be a dehumidifier?

I don't know about you, but when I see a product at the store, I look for its other uses too. Can it be taken apart and modified to suit me better? What parts does it have inside to make my other projects more worthwhile? Does the sum of the parts inside make it worth my purchase? Does the $200 xbox have $700 worth of discrete parts inside for my graphics project? Is the black van parked down the street going to bust down my door and tell me There Are No User Servicable Parts Inside and I should be a good consumer and not do what God had not intended for Adam and Eve were commanded to do? That sounds silly. I see an opportunity.

The xbox is my toy. I find the hardware a challenge. Its the worlds greatest technical challenge. Many people run 26 miles to win a race, but the first to crack this puzzle wins and takes a one-time place in history. There can only be one. Who will it be?

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Sloppy]

If they try to use DMCA to prevent this, they are likely to lose. Their case isn't nearly as good as MPAA's was against 2600, which was itself, dubious. Microsoft getting a DMCA ruling in their favor on this issue, would require overt and blatant corruption on the part of the judge, in a manner that would make Kaplan look like a saint by comparison.

What Microsoft needs is new legislation that goes beyond DMCA. This shouldn't be a problem. Of course, this requires overt and blatant corruption on the part of legislators, but legislators have demonstrated they're ok with that, and not nearly as squeamish as judges. Once the new law gets passed, the courts can safely enforce it without having to worry about responsibility.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, what you think is irrelevant. It's what the law says that matters and if it says that circumventing the BIOS to enable "illegal activity", worded quite broadly, then you are in violation of the law.

Your toy analogy doesn't hold water when it comes to Linux (or any OS that allows CD or DVD reading and writing) on a device that is designed not to run any OS but its own.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's what the law says that matters and if it says that circumventing the BIOS

Remove the goddamned BIOS then. No software to circumvent. Good enough for you?

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Anonymous Coward]

By removing the BIOS, you have just performed a circumvention. The hole you dig gets deeper with each shovelful of crap you heave.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Anonymous Coward]

My greatest challenge is to shovel this crap down the emperor's throat. More the merrier! Won't you join me?

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't follow. Are you saying that Taco is into scat?

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[martyn s]

You can't possibly think that the MPAA's case against 2600 was better than any hypothetical case microsoft can have against this. 2600 wasn't even serving DeCSS, they just had links to it. Sorry, but you're wrong.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[zenyu]

Of course, this requires overt and blatant corruption on the part of legislators, but legislators have demonstrated they're ok with that, and not nearly as squeamish as judges.

Heh, I know we all enjoying making fun of Canadian's, but I was describing our electoral system to one a while back, she stopped me by practically yelling, "What? They have corporate sponsorship? Bribery is illegal in Canada!" She was entirelly befudled by the whole concept of 'soft-money' "It buys as many ads as the hard money, eh?"

My phrases from then on all began with, "But.."

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[antirename]

I've always liked the "no user servicable parts inside". At work, I unpacked a UPS with one of those stickers on it. The the battery had gotten unplugged in shipping. Now, if the box had an EULA on it "by opening this you agree not to dissasemble", should I be a criminal? I think that the sticker actually means "people not smart enough to know that the big round things are capacitors or that the large wires going to the tube inside that TV are connected to a flyback transformer should not remove any screws, or they'll wind up in the Darwin awards." I have saved an enormous amount of time and money working on my own hardware, whether that be my pc, my server, or my air conditioner.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[IXI]

Just don't buy Xboxes then.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sure as fuck aint going to be you!

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Raster Burn]

At least running 26 miles ensures that you're in good physical condition.

Sitting behind a soldering iron all day only guarantees a shirt full of burn holes :)

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[DinZy]

Its the worlds greatest technical challenge

What the hell are you thinking by making this claim? Cracking the Xbox is tit compared to designing it form the ground up. And even that was not to complicated a task for modern technology.

If this is so hard then perhaps your time would be better served developing a clean and efficient source of power or perhaps building a functioning quantum computer.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Da Schmiz]

Um... I believe federal law states that no device can be shipped by a common carrier with an active power source attached. (IANAL... the actual wording may be slightly different.) This is the reason why small electronic devices, even when batteries are included, don't have the batteries inserted. AFAIK, any UPS won't have the battery connected out-of-box; a brightly colored sticker on the side will inform you that you must insert tab A into slot B before you can use it.

How they can say that and "no user serviceable parts inside" is a mystery, unless they have somehow redefined the meaning of the word "inside".

This reminds me of a story that I posted to /. once before (unfortunately, I can't find it right now) about when I used to work as a PC technician. For a while, the HP Pavilion (home user) series PCs came with a small shiny sticker stratgically placed so that you couldn't open the case without tearing the sticker. This dissuaded roughly 95% of users from ever opening the case, even though what was printed on the sticker was: "Opening the case will NOT void warranty" or something along those lines.

For the average user, who probably doesn't want to know how it works on the inside anyway, it doesn't take much to discourage them from ever opening the box.

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Suppafly]

heh.. my pavilion had one of those.. it lasted about a day.. i didnt even realize what it said until after i had ripped it apart..

Re:How Can MS Effectively Prosecute This?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anybody else thinking of Brazil?????

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[flonker]

One with software patents and laws against reverse engineering.

Short sighted Re:Price comparision

[IXI]

> Also don't you want to screw Microsoft? In order for Microsoft to make any money (or to break even for that matter) they need to sell something like 30 games per xbox user. (They get about $5 per game) Why? Because they are selling the XBox for less than is costs to make.

And why do you think they do it? They act like drug dealers trying to take over a market. As soon as they have crashed their opponents they will increase the price. OTOH once you have a wiXBox you are much more likely to buy a game for it, even if you usually run Linux on it. And finally M$ won't discount Xbox-Linux users from their XBox sales numbers but they will advertise increased XBox sales.

So in the long run the Linux on XBox project will hurt Linux/Free Software and not M$. The only thing that would hurt M$ would be a cheap XBox clone - apart from buying other hardware of course.

Re:Short sighted Re:Price comparision

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH once you have a wiXBox you are much more likely to buy a game for it, even if you usually run Linux on it

I can imagine the typical Linux XBox haX0r right now:

1) Spends $300 on XBox and modkit, plus $100 for someone to do the install because the guy doesn't know how to solder. Obtains Linux boot disk.

2) Pengiun appears on TV, young haX0r says "Heh Heh" to himself.

3) Using joystick, types in "emacs". XBox goes OOPS as it runs out of swapspace.

4) Young HaX0r gets frustrated, calms down by playing Halo for the next 8 days while waiting for the next Linux ISO release.

Re:Short sighted Re:Price comparision

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh... but in order to get linux on it you will need to do the mod which will allow you to run copied games which means yes, you have some xbox games but none of which you actually bought and hence M$ doesn't get anything out of it.

Heck, I'm tempted to go out and get and XBox, mod it and then just get copied games... but only slightly tempted... I'm happy with my ps2.

Re:Short sighted Re:Price comparision

[IXI]

> [...] none of which you actually bought and hence M$ doesn't get anything out of it.

You really think that? Didn't you give them something for the Xbox? Even if they lose some bucks on each Xbox it's a gain for them because they have already invested in the development and hardware/contracets they bought.

M$ loses only if they DON'T sell Xboxes.

What EULA?

[EnglishTim]

Last I heard, you were *buying* an XBox, not licensing it...

One word (and then a few more)

[Nameles]

Viruses.

(I'm sure there's a stupid law/bill/thing somewhere in the US about them being illegal.)

Burning the .raw file to try it out

[Henry Stern]

Do any of you know how to burn the .raw file? Pick an OS, any OS! I want to try this out on my xbox.

Re:Burning the .raw file to try it out

[Trevelyan]

its an iso, so is a .bin
the extentions (to unix anyway) means nothing, there only there to help humans*
but anyway think about, they called it .raw cause its a raw image of a CD, but CDs are iso9660 so, the image is an 'iso'. (rename it .iso if u want)

If you a linux,BSD,etc user (or plan on moving to) remember this technique to help confuse the windows users and their programs =)

*except for some realy anoying programs like bzip2, which seems to complain about expanding files that dont end in bz2, realy annoying

backwards data

[Anonymous Coward]

The disks actually rotate the other way.
Since data is in a spiral track, instead
of in concentric circular tracks, you're
going to fail. Um, hack your motor???

Re:backwards data

[polarkittycat]

Well if you do a raw copy I don't see that making a difference... sure it means the data would be un usable on the computer, but it can still gets copied exactly as it was, regardless.

Re:backwards data

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot.

Re:backwards data

[frovingslosh]

You're missing the point. The spiral is actually in the other direction. Unless the duplicator motor goes backward the result will be different. Very different if the reader doesn't go backwards as well, as the media can't even be read properly in the normal direction of rotation. Remember, this isn't concentric tracks, this is a spiral of data.

Re:backwards data

[morgus morphus]

Even worse, it means that regular blank DVDRs won't work since they contain a track that the drive has to follow when burning them, so you'd have to get reversed DVDRs as well... Which of course don't exist. However, it is not the XBox but the Gamecube that uses the trick of spinning the wrong way round, since the XBox uses regular PC DVD drives.

There are two protections used on the XBox against copying / unauthorized software, one physical and one software.

The BIOS in the XBox will read the bootsector of the disc from the second layer of the DVD, which it is not possible to burn (no such thing as a two-layer DVDR, and if you think about how two-layer DVDs work compared to DVDRs, I don't think they'll ever come).

Also, every "program" that wants to be run on the XBox has to be signed with MSs cryptographic key.

Re:backwards data

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the spiral is not the other direction, it simply reads from the edge of the disk instead of from the center. The disk spins the same way.

What kind of world?

[jawad]

A brave new one.

nope - read the box

[BlueboyX]

There is a EULA on the OUTSIDE of the xbox package. It forbids you from running unauthorized code. And they defend this EULA in the courts because it is plainly viewable to users before/as they are buying the unit, rather than being only visable after you open the box.

Bummer.

Re:nope - read the box

[bravehamster]

There is a EULA on the OUTSIDE of the xbox package.

And what if I buy my xbox used?

Re:nope - read the box

[antirename]

Forbids my ass. That EULA doesn't mean anything more than the box it's printed on. Next they'll be saying "it is illegal to put a Tux sticker on an xbox" or "it is illegal to use this case as a flowerpot". Its HARDWARE. Let them try this one in court.

Re:nope - read the box

[ceejayoz]

The person selling it has to transfer the EULA over to you... I'm pretty sure there are laws regulating that.

Re:nope - read the box

[rjamestaylor]

or here, since the link you gave is closed already

Re:nope - read the box

[jakew]

Don't EULAs rely on the (dubious) idea that you are making a temporary copy in RAM, and therefore need permission? If so, surely this doesn't apply to ROM software (executed from ROM, that is). So can a EULA for an embedded device have even the remotest validity? I say not, but I am not a lawyer...

Migor is angry

[Anonymous Coward]

Migor is angry. Migor has identified a creature worse then the common household troll.

Migor calles them retarded mods. They are evil. They mod down insightful and informitive comments because they don't understand them, or worse, are too stupid to reconize the humor.

Migor is here to help. Migor will keep posting to waste those mod's points so real mods can mod up the good comments.

Migor will eat your soul

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[deander2]

echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D7272 C3AF4F2snlbxq'|dc

So what does this do, exactly? (no, I'm not stupid enough to just simply run it)

What a fucking waste!

[byran lei]

> Microsoft, could you please sign this application?
>
Are you XFlop lusers going to start begging MicroShaft to sign *EVERY* fucking app that you idiots try to run on the XFlop? You might as well pack it in now,'cause it ain't going to happen. Don't even think for one moment that Microshaft is going to let you guys run GCC or any other important Unix/Linux/BSD app on the XFlop hardware.

Private property

[dmaxwell]

Maybe because once I buy something then it's mine. Period. End of story. We aren't talking about some sort of nebulous "intellectual property". An XBox is a physical good. If I'm not using it to play copied games then not even the DMCA remotely applies. They are getting full access to their own personal property and no one who holds copyrights on the contents of a Linux distro cares either.....as long as the changes to GPL stuff is released anyway.

Incidentally, this is how to torpedo them in any propaganda wars. No ultra conservative Republican is going to come out against private property. Once the money changes hands, it is the buyers property.

Re:Private property

[fferreres]

How log until law states you are not actually buying hardware, but somethng like renting it for some purposes?

I mean, if I buy a DVD and want to play it on Linux (legaly) I can't. Isn't this like a lifetime "renting" of hardware? If I can't access play a DVD I own on Hardware I know, then I don't really own anything.

How long until until we are restricted from modifing our hardware as we see fit?

Re:Private property

[nzhavok]

How log until law states you are not actually buying hardware, but somethng like renting it for some purposes?

Interesting question, look into a bit of computing history and you'll see that this is exactly what IBM used to do when it had no competition. One of the advantages was no second hand market means more profit.

Re:Private property

[fferreres]

Now that I come to think about it, the don't need to rent you the hardware. They can rent you or lease the OS. So eventually, you can't tamper it in any way you don't like. Controlling the hardware would mean they get keep their renting "revenues" for a eternity. What's good a machine, if you can't run non-rented software on it?

Mhh... maybe I am beign too paranoid :) After all, all this are not matters of life and death.

Re:Private property

[analog_line]

Obligatory Preface: I am not a lawyer.

How exactly does the DMCA not apply here? Modders (of all console systems) are bypassing technological measures designed to stop illegally copied software from functioning. That it allows you to run Linux on it is irrelevant in the eyes of the law, as the case against 2600 magazine, which they themselves gave up on, establishes the precedent for. See also the Elcomsoft case, but less so. DECSS has no bearing on the actual copying of DVDs, it gives anyone who puts out a DVD the mechanism to control what their media will play on, and the courts have upheld the DMCA's blanket protection of such mechanisms so far as completely constitutional.

The things that an Xbox mod circumvents is such a technological mechanism. The actual purpose of those doing the modding is irrelevant, just as it has been in the Elcomsoft and 2600 Magazine cases, they courts ruled that the circumvention, for any reason, is the illegal activity, not the intent.

Not that I mind that people are doing it, but if you believe that those creating and distributing mod chips for the Xbox are on any kind of solid legal ground, you are fooling yourself. I expect Microsoft has a team of lawyers working hard on creating a case for this, whenever they determine they want to go to trial over it.

Waste of time? I think not

[Joey7F]

Some people have jokingly said That it is not a waste of time as long as we are annoying M$.

It is more than that! As with every product for consumers the way people hear about them is through advertising...pure and simple.

So every time Microsoft says they don't want linux being run on their hardware, it not only "bugs" M$ but it also gives Linux free publicity. Hell, if I were IBM, Red Hat et al. I would being running linux on anything and everything Microsoft just for the propaganada value alone!

No such thing as bad press, and this only makes Microsoft seem like a corrupt organization bent on making computing their way or the highway. Let 'em, to paraphrase Leia "The more they tighten their grip the more [operating] systems will slip through their grasp"

--Joey

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[CTho9305]

prints out "114" a whole bunch of times.

Bill still goes to the bank

[ToasterTester]

XBox Linux and app's will help sell more X-Box's and Bill takes another bag of money to the bank. Oh I get it, eliminate Windows by helping Gates diversify.

Re:Bill still goes to the bank

[WhiteWolf666]

Well, this is not entirely true. There are two minor technicalities: 1. Each Xbox costs more to build than its $200 price tag justifies, especially including research and development costs for all the custom software and testing that went into it. There is the small caveat that in buying each system, we are actually helping Microsoft make back $200 of the initial cost, since it would cost them MORE to have the xboxes rot on the shelves, but if we can sort of hit the right happy medium where sales justify continued production due to anticipated game sales/rentals there is a worst case scenario :), and based on current xbox sales figures, it seems like it is going that way :). Thus, I might buy an xbox, because it would be damn cool to have a nice console PC with good HDTV out, (and hopefully) linux support soon.

Re:Bill still goes to the bank

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Microsoft doesn't make any money from selling XBoxes (yet). They make $$$ by selling games.

Re:Bill still goes to the bank

[Raster Burn]

I don't know how this is a "troll." So much for the power of the purse, we're helping Microsoft!

Re:Bill still goes to the bank

[Cynikal]

actually no, as it is widely known, MS loses money on each sale, in which they hope to make up for with software sales... so this project adds injury to insult towards ms...

Re:Bill still goes to the bank

[bogado]

If you buy one you will raise the sells witch will make more game-houses to buy the development-kit and sign contracts to sell games in this plataform. So MS gains more then your $200,00

Re:Bill still goes to the bank

[Andy Dodd]

And then the developers see crappy sales of their games, get burned, and stay away from M$'s next entry in the console market.

Anyway, the losses from hacked consoles will be far greater than the amount recouped from additional developer deals, if any.

Keep in mind that developers likely won't pay attention as much to console sales, but to how well games for a given console do at this point. Initially console sales and hype were where it was at, but now that there is sales data available for games themselves...

This proves they jack up PC prices

[Anonymous Coward]

X-box's cost, what, 300 dollars? Not even that. Yet it costs us thousands of dollars to buy great PC's.

Please.

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[jareds]

What kind of world/reality are we living in, where your own software can be anything else than "legal" ??

One where your own code is linked against someone else's libraries. The FSF won't let you distribute programs linked against their libraries unless you comply with their license either.

jee...

[The Creator]

Will they call it a LinuXbox now?

Re:jee...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, you got that totally wrong. RMS and BG3 will object strongly. The proper name from now on is

Microsoft GNU/LinuXbox

Yeah, but soldering is a pain and scary

[Frank of Earth]

It really won't be that popular until xbox mod chips don't require soldering in 20 points. I wouldn't be willing to fry my xBox to have linux run on it.

I don't see xBox hacking getting as popular as Tivo hacking or even Audrey hacking until they can overcome the need to solder to the mother/daughter/whatever card.

I think the project is cool though, regardless. I'm sure by the time they get it figured out so that any pseudo-hacker can do it, MS will have xBox^2 out. [xCube/xBox^3 ??]

I'm not sure why everyone is looking to "screw" MS anyways. Just do it because you can, not because you are trying to stick it to them.. for what I really don't know. Perhaps the annoying paperclip *shrug*

Re:Yeah, but soldering is a pain and scary

[antirename]

No it's not... you just need a better soldering gun and more practice. Oh yeah, and buy a rig that can REMOVE solder as well. Then tinker with a few dead modems to get comfortable, and mod away. The trick is that transistors and chips don't seem to work very well after you heat them to 300 degrees C trying to get solder to stick.

Real games

[IamTheRealMike]

Who cares about Halo - what I want to play is XBill on an XBox. Now that would be hilarious, especially if you were to demonstrate one at LinuxWorld :)

Re:Real games

[IXI]

And those who laugh lodest is the PR department of M$. I actually can even hear them ROTFL in Redmont over here in germany - they have already eaten up all carpets.

Re:Completely legal? MOD PARENT UP

[sedawkgrep]

MOD PARENT UP

What Mallory said

[vtweb]

When a clueless reporter asked Mallory why he would climb MT Everest, as if it were the most non-sensical thing imaginable, Mallory answered:

"Because it is there".

Re:What Mallory said

[Anonymous Coward]

The analog to this silly story is this:

A bunch of computer enthusiasts ask Michael Steil why he is walking to the end of the block, as if it were the most difficult thing in the world. Steil and his apologists answer: "Because it's there".

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[dimator]

One with more lawyers than any other living organism.

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[AftanGustur]

One where your own code is linked against someone else's libraries [slashdot.org]. The FSF won't let you distribute programs linked against their libraries unless you comply with their license either.

First of all, you are not paying for those "someone else's libraries" so you realy have no claim for a right to use the code.

Secondly, you could always duplicate the functionality of the libraries in question by writing your own code.

Now, in the X-Bos case, you buy the machine it's YOURS, and you have absolutely NO means of duplicating the functionality of the XBox (at least no legal means.

So, please don't compare apples and oranges and claim that since oranges can be sour, it's also ok for apples to be sour.

i agree.

[jon_c]

However, the modchips themselves are clearly violating the DMCA, as they reverse engineered the XBOX to bypass copyright protection, reading the DMCA that is word for word what it makes illegal.

Now the question is; is it legal for you to install a modchip, which bypasses copyright protection? I think we have now entered a gray area.

-Jon

(note: I completely disagree with the DMCA, it's already got me into far too much trouble

Re:i agree.

[Junta]

Well, for one, does it make playing of import games or dvds possible? At that point you could argue the design of the chip had the necessary side-effect of circumvention to accomplish the projects goals of playing european DVDs.

I personally think the DMCA should be repealed (same as you), it completely spits in the face of fair use and rubs it into the ground. I want to make backups of what I play and store the originals. The companies have repeatedly proven they are not up to the task of replacing defective, lost, or stolen media, especially after the obsolecence of the product or after the company goes bust. I have a modchipped playstation and I play my own copies of my games which are immediately put back in the cases and stored away, because I like to collect the stuff as well as play it. Punish the people copying and distributing copies illegally, do not punish those who excercise their right to fair use.
The DMCA would probably not stand up in the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, the cases relevant are civil cases and as such the prosecuting party can opt to drop suit at any time. Because of this combination, we regularly see the big companies back off of cases where the defense can afford to go to the Supreme Court and it looks likely that it could happen. The big companies know their preciousssss DMCA is on extremely shaky ground and don't want to rock the boat.

What I want to see is a party develop a crappy protection procedure and use it with the express intent of another, cooperating party circumventing it. Then the two escalate with minimal legal costs the issue as high as it can go in hopes of reaching the supreme court. Repeat until some measure of success is had.

Re:i agree.

[jon_c]

I don't want to see them go after anyone, i don't think there needs to be any laws about this. As a friend of mine puts it, "what are we solving by crimalizing these people".

I think the goverment should turn a blind eye and the record companies should spend there engry developing better DRM's and copyright protection. If it's good enough most people won't bother breaking it and we won't need laws.

-Jon

Re:i agree.

[Junta]

What about fair use? If the laws could be reliably applied to copyright infringement, the legitimate need for all this Digital Rights Maiming and Copy Prevention would go away. The indirect benefit there would be fair use being protected. What I would like to see is the copyright law work two ways, one, protect IP owners from infringement, giving a means through civil courts to be compensated for violation, as it works now. An addendum I want to see is a punishment for companies going 'copyright vigilante' and implementing measures to protect copyright that have the side-effect of denying fair use rights. Fair use rights should be actively protected. Of course for the second to be fair the first half needs some beefing up to make it more economically feasible to use civil courts to punish offenders. Of course a copyright protection scheme that somehow managed to preserve fair use would still be legal and the ideal solution, but realistically there is no such scheme, or at least any such scheme that would be economically sound. But the US is a nation for and by the corporation now, sadly, so such enhancements for the people would be lobbyed out the door by big business....

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[Anonymous Coward]

So, please don't compare apples and oranges and claim that since oranges can be sour, it's also ok for apples to be sour

hmmm... I don't think that it's ok for oranges to be sour

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[Anonymous Coward]

that, or "rikardur@sky.fr"

oops

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[jareds]

First of all, you are not paying for those "someone else's libraries" so you realy have no claim for a right to use the code.

I never claimed such a right.

Secondly, you could always duplicate the functionality of the libraries in question by writing your own code.

Now, in the X-Bos case, you buy the machine it's YOURS, and you have absolutely NO means of duplicating the functionality of the XBox (at least no legal means.

Um, what? I wasn't aware of anyone trying to duplicate the functionality of the Xbox. Since they're being sold at a loss, that would be rather pointless.

What's actually happening is that people, who couldn't legally use code that comes with the Xbox Development Kit because that would violate both copyright law, nevertheless managed to write legal software for the Xbox by writing their own code to duplicate the functionality provided by the XDK. The situation is perfectly analogous.

Video Card?

[quakeroatz]

Where's your video card? Or were you planning on playing Xbox games on an integrated Intel "3D" chip.

You forgot the most expensive part of the entire Xbox, the ~GF3!

Redundant?

[The Creator]

How can it be redundant? When i sort the page oldest first, flat, treshold -1. It's the first string mach on "linuxbox"(case insignificant). So how the hell can it be "redundant"?!

Be careful...

[Anonymous Coward]

"When you fight the monster, no to become the monster yourself".

Please insert the correct name of the (German?) philosopher who said this. I forgot. I always forget names. Yes, very lame.

Re:Be careful...

[Anonymous Coward]

Friedrich Nietzsche, although he phrased it a little differently - it actually begins, "When one looks into the abyss, one must take care..."

'legal' uses?

[MoreBeer]

I'm not normally a theorist, but...

""

I seem to recall the rumour that Saddam Hussein ordered hundreds/thousands of PS2s shipped to Iraq when they first came out because of export restrictions of normal PCs.

If someone were to port Linux to unmodded Xboxen, I would imagine an inexpensive, powerful Cluster solution is not far behind, and I'm thinking of different solutions than one big-ass Quake server.

Am I completely insane here?

Re:'legal' uses?

[Cynikal]

my memory is a bit rusty on this, but rumor was that iraq wanted to use the ps2 as cheap missile guidance systems... i guess that plan never flew

Time to debunk this myth.

[AJWM]

Buying Xboxes for purposes other than playing games (without buying any games) hurts microsoft financially,

You make it sound like Microsoft is (still) selling the boxes for less than it costs to make them. Sorry, that isn't the case.

Oh, sure, that might have been true for the first production run when MS was writing down their development costs, doing small hardware volumes and paying the setup charges for plastic molds and the like. Those are all sunk costs now, written off of last year's taxes.

Anybody who still thinks that unit cost of an Xbox now isn't less than what MS sells them to the stores for hasn't looked at the price of bulk lots of components lately. Hell, or even the finished price of a lot of consumer electronics.

I guarantee you that MicroSoft makes money now on every box sold, even if they don't sell any games with it. Gates & co. are laughing all the way to the bank that some anti-microsofters are buying the things because they still think MSFT loses money on the deal.

Re:Time to debunk this myth.

[haggar]

Now, now... since you're so much more knowledgeable than the rest of us, would you care to enlighten us as to how much Microsoft is making, on each Xbox they sell? Expecially since you have looked at the price of bulk lots of components lately

I am not saying you're wrong. I am not saying you're right, either, I just think you have no real way of knowing. What is the price of a 700 MHz Celeron, nowadays? Who the heck knows? You can't find them anywhere, it's an exotic component. For all I (or you) know, it could cost anywhere between $US 3 and $US 100 (because it's so hard to find). Same goes for the 6 GB hard disk.

Re:Time to debunk this myth.

[martyn s]

That may be true, in fact I am inclined to believe what you are saying. *But* I was showing that if Xboxes were sold at a loss, you wouldn't be "helping" Microsoft by buying them, just because if you wouldn't buy it they would get zero revenue and if you would buy it they would recoup some of their losses. If Xboxes were sold at a loss, and you bought one or some without games, you wouldn't be helping Microsoft, because they make new Xboxes based on demand, and for every Xbox you buy, another is made to satisfy the demand of those who buy if for games.

But I agree with you, they likely make money on each box, especially because Microsoft has the tendency of underplaying their success and understating their earnings. They don't hype up their stock, so it wouldn't be out of character for them to say, or go along with the idea that they were losing money on each box, even if they weren't.

Re:Time to debunk this myth.

[Skipio]

There is no way to manufacture a computer with PIII processor, Nvidia chipset, 64MB memory, 8 GB hard drive, DVD-ROM drive etc. for only $170 (the wholesale price).

The PIII processor and the Nvidia chipset would cost between $80-$100 combined and then you would have to add all the other components, hard drive for $30-$40, DVD-ROM for $20 and so on. When you have added the cost of manufacturing the X-box itself you are probably looking at cost of $250 to manufacture each X-box.

Re:Time to debunk this myth.

[elysian1]

Last I read, it costs Intel something like $17 to make a P4 2.2GHz chip. I'm sure NVidia's chips are similar in price. I'm not saything that MS is making money on these things, but I could see how they COULD.

Re:Time to debunk this myth.

[AJWM]

I just think you have no real way of knowing

True, I'm not privy to the contracts between Microsoft and its suppliers, so I have no way of knowing for sure. But I know what other things sell for and I know the kind of deals that manufacturers give to large-lot buyers (because it's that much per-item marketing overhead they don't have on a volume sale).

What is the price of a 700 MHz Celeron, nowadays? [..] anywhere between $US 3 and $US 100

My estimate would be closer to the $3 than to the $100. Old technology and Intel has I'm sure long ago made back the investment on the fabs. Similarly with the graphics chip, although that probably costs more than the CPU.

The DVD-ROM drive is probably less than $10 (you can buy cheap ones retail for less than $40, you can buy a consumer DVD player for well under $100. The hard drive might be a little more but not much. The case is a few cents worth of plastic, and so on.

Re:Time to debunk this myth.

[toopc]

My estimate would be closer to the $3 than to the $100. Old technology and Intel has I'm sure long ago made back the investment on the fabs. Similarly with the graphics chip, although that probably costs more than the CPU.

The DVD-ROM drive is probably less than $10 (you can buy cheap ones retail for less than $40, you can buy a consumer DVD player for well under $100. The hard drive might be a little more but not much. The case is a few cents worth of plastic, and so on.

Stop it you're ruining the fantasy! Linux on the Xbox will too bankrupt Microsoft! I'm going to put my hands over my eyes and chant "La La La La" so I don't have to hear this!

Re:Time to debunk this myth.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yall are all forgetting that these are not off the shelf components.
The nvidia chipset is a custom job (nforce was based on it, the Intel chip is a custom job, the whole thing has encryption and anti-hack hardware strung throughout it.
I garuntee you cant swap the Xbox DVD-ROM for an off the shelf model.
All the custom parts (expecially no longer produced ones) drive the cost up.
do you think it's worth it for intel to keep a fab line up for this one chip design compare to what they could be putting out for mass market runs on the same equipment?

Re:Time to debunk this myth.

[AJWM]

At the volume lots we're talking about, these are off the shelf components. It's just that the shelf is labelled "Reserved for Microsoft"

Custom parts only drive the price up in small volumes. In large volumes, custom parts drive the cost down because you don't pay for features/bits you don't need. (Hint, this is why cars have so many parts customized to one or two model lines rather than a "standard" part that would fit multiple models.)

do you think it's worth it for intel to keep a fab line up for this one chip design compare to what they could be putting out for mass market runs on the same equipment?

The thing is, they can't use the same equipment for something else. It costs a lot of money to set up and tune a (high volume) fab line to a particular chip. Anything produced after that's paid off is almost pure profit. Switching the line to a different chip (newer technology) runs up the cost all over again.

Sure, Intel has absolutely zero incentive to sell $10 700MHz Celerons when it could be selling $100+ P4s, but it can't make P4s on a Celeron fab line. And Microsoft is about the only company that could give Intel a big enough incentive to keep the Celeron line running. (Hint, it ain't just the purchase price of those Celeries.)

Linux on...

[bluephone]

The Linux on the DC was neat, Linux on the PS2 was surprising, given Sony's anal tendencies, but this is just not all that surprising. I want to see Linux on the GameCube, the N64 (with those flashable carts), the Saturn, and maybe even the X32 for the Genesis. THAT would be cool.

XBox games on Xbox w/ Linux

[Trevelyan]

What i'd like to know does/will Linux on Xbox be able to run/play existing xbox games?
Or will you still have to boot the WinCE on it?
maybe an adaptation of wine? winCE cant have as big interface as main windows.

Now other post have talk about sticking it to M$, but it would realy hurt them if Xbox linux can play xbox games. Even more if some (main stream) game developers made games that use linux on xbox

hmmmm

[brsmith4]

Could you imagine a beowu... you thought I was gonna say it, huh? Well, actually, if you think about it, if you clustered a bunch of these bad boys together, they would take up less space and produce less heat than a normal cluster and offer the same computing power. Sounds good to me even if it is m$

Re:hmmmm

[Kredal]

Make clusters of PS2's instead. They're much thinner, and probably put out less heat.

And they WANT you to run Linux on them. (:

Re:hmmmm

[brsmith4]

agreed.

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[Prior Restraint]

echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D7272 C3AF4F2snlbxq'|dc

So what does this do, exactly? (no, I'm not stupid enough to just simply run it)

I am! It prints out an email address on my machine (omitted for the sake of avoiding harvesters).

Besides, what exactly is it that you're worried about? It's an echo piped to a calculator. About the worst that could happen is it prints something obscene.

I also hear..

[Inoshiro]

That these Xboxes are fun to play video games on.

Imagine that!

EULAs are a fairy tale

[jmorris42]

Don't fall for the fallacy that EULAs mean a damn thing. They don't unless you live in a state that signed onto UCITA. They can print any silly text they want to but that does not make it a binding contract.

A contract needs several conditions. It needs to be SIGNED. It must offer a tangible benefit to BOTH parties. If I buy an X-Box at WalMart or a game, I have BOUGHT a physical product. Both contain copyrighted material, my use of which is governed by U.S. Copyright law (since I live in the US) but in no way am I bound by any sort of EULA.

The only computer product which I have owned which might have been governed by a EULA was my first Tandy. Before purchasing it I was required to read and sign a contract on five part carbon paper. That would have been a legally binding contract had I not been sixteen years old at the time. :)

Another blow to software control

[FuzzyDaddy]

The xbox hardware, as people point out, is a loss leader. What does Microsoft gain by selling it?

They gain a platform over which they finally have full control over the software. If they made computers like Apple, Linux would never have gotten anywhere - too much of the system would have been closed. But by working on the open PC architecture, they were unable to ever fully clamp down control over all software through technology. This made them clamp down through anti-competitive practices, such as forcing OEM's to pay for a windows license for each CPU shipped, etc.

The xbox finally gives them full control over the software. You can't even compile and distribute your own code without their permission because of their EULA for the SDK.

That's why this is so great - you take them up on the loss leader, but they don't get the absolute software control they were hoping for.

free/open source {don't mix with } MS

[Vaughn Anderson]

sorry, I have a faint feeling here that MS has got the open source community by the balls and is just waiting to squeeze.

If you buy an xBox you are buying MS, and they will find a way to get you to buy something else from them, (even if you run free apps) or force you to throw your box away if you can't fix their updates that crash your apps.

At the very least MS is getting version 1 of the xbox "linux vulnerabilities" bug testing done for free... just show everyone how to crack the xbox (even MS) and then see that crack fixed with a simple update in a game or virused in online...

This is all just "pro-xBox" propaganda, and shouldn't be given the light of day...

Just cause this relates to linux/open source/free doesn't mean it's good or news worthy...

-v

Hmm...

[bruthasj]

Now who is assimilating who?

YEAH! but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can actually play games on the xbox..

hooray

[Anonymous Coward]

nice to see you zealots are doing something legal for once.

How you actually promote xbox

[fluor2]

I think that all these "running (insert OS here) on xbox" and similar hacks and cracks only supports the main campain from Microsoft: sell xboxes. I dont like all the promotion MS will get because of these projects. Please stop posting them. If everybody gets a modded xbox, the prices will increase, since microsoft no longer earns money on xbox software. This means that the situation is just a win-win IF news like this can be read just by a few people.

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[Anonymous Coward]

rikardur@sky.fr

Intel's cost for a P4

[elysian1]

Intel's cost to make a P4 is around $21. So, to make a Celeron, it might be less and if MS buys a ton of them, they could get them for pretty cheap.

brave man

[karlm]

A funny story: the another roomate in the same place was into ISOs on IRC. Someone in the channel had a rare Japanese market game ISO. My roomate asked the guy what he wanted. The roomate then copied his windows swap file to whatever.iso (where whatever was the name of the game the guy wanted). They then swapped "ISOs". A day later our firewall was DOSsed. We figure the guy didn't take too kindly to the trade :)

His swap file? Did he grep his swap file to make sure IE didn't swap out his credit card number recently? His home address? Passwords? Site membership username/password pairs? Network crypto credentials? His home machine LanMan and md4 password hashes?

Your friend is a bit too brave and/or not quite smart enough. There's a reason you can encrypt your swap in *BSD and Linux.

He should have half expected to wake up the next morning to a cubic yard of elephant dung and a baker's dozen of giant monogrammed pokemon vibrators charged to his credit card and shipped overnight to his mailing address from central Mongolia. He would have deserved it, I might add. He could have at least tried to get the file on an IOU basis. It's not like the other guy's bandwidth cost him more than his time. If I were the other guy, I'd take the oportunity to make a friend. No skin off my back and a quite useful philosophy. Of course, if your friend enjoys Mongolian elephant dung, giant vibrators, and DOS attacks, who am I to judge?

hmm, has potential

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.angelfire.com/linux/shapegame0/uniXbox. jpg

some stupid logo i made because i couldnt get to sleep, i guess i obviously didnt put much effort into it but maybe someone could take the concept and make a good one?

Re: Misconception (IMPORTANT?)

[fferreres]

I have seen this line of though a lot of time. I think this line of though is wrong. Here's how I see it.

Microsoft has to sell 30 games per xbox. That's the number of games, based on an estimate of the "genuine" xbox they have in their business plan.

If they happen to sell more xboxes, they have no aditional costs. Surely the hardware is pretty cheap to manufacture, so they DON'T care about selling 100 million xboxes to the Linux geeks. They will NOT lose money because of this, they may even earn profits from this.

But the point is they need to sell games to make a sucessfull console. Ie: they need normal buyers (96% of them are this now) buying games, and Linux on XBox will (SURPRISE) *not* *affecting* games sold.

Anyone that thinks the "marginal cost" of producing an XBox is higher than the selling price is wrong. This ain't true.

They may lose money because they can't fully recover the developement cost (patents, engineering, OS, PR, etc.), and when they sell at a loss it means they don't expect to sell enough games/consoles to compesate those spendings. But selling more XBoxes will NOT hurt them economically.

Now, if anyone can prove to me they are paying more for EACH XBox produced than the selling price, please enlighten me. Because I'd bet sisters it ain't so.

Work on something useful

[Anonymous Coward]

What wasted effort. Who really wants/needs/cares about this? MicroSoft will just break the design on every hardware update anyway. Work on things useful for the Linux community instead. Duh...

VIDEO CARD??

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you forgot the $300 for the video card shit head.

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[FreeUser]

Um, what? I wasn't aware of anyone trying to duplicate the functionality of the Xbox. Since they're being sold at a loss, that would be rather pointless.

The point is that it is irrelevant that Microsoft is selling the hardware at a loss.

They've taken their customer's money, therefor their customers own the box, period. The manner in which they lock down how their customers can USE their own property is unconscionable, and I for applaud the GNU and Linux folks for providing a Free and legal means for the customer to reacquire control of their own property, back from the hands of those who think nothing of designing a business model that requires and presupposes invasive violations of individual privacy and liberty in order to be successful.

I read the box. Didn't see it.

[dschuetz]

There is a EULA on the OUTSIDE of the xbox package.

You know, I bought an Xbox about two weeks ago, and I never saw any EULA on the box. Certainly, I didn't see it before I bought it, and completed the transaction.

I'm guessing it's in small print somewhere -- I didn't look too closely at the box 'cause it looked like it was all marketing crap (pictures of cool games, accessories you can buy, etc.), and because I wanted to get it home and plugged in. There was also no sticker on the box keeping me from opening it without agreeing to anything, there was nothing on the unit itself, and I certainly didn't need to open the manual to get it running.

So, unproven philosophical discussions on the enforceability of a non-negotiated EULA aside, they certainly didn't go out of their way to make me see the agreement. I know I was specifically surprised by this, and went looking for such a EULA after I had it running (but, apparently, I didn't look close enough).

HOWEVER, that doesn't change the fact that anyone should be able to develop their own software for the box and have it run on NON-modded systems. I don't buy the crap (which I've never seen proven) about MS or Sony losing money on each console sold. And, if that's the case, then they need to sell consoles for their actual cost, tough luck, bad business model. The Xbox is a computer. People are allowed to write software for computers. They don't need permission from anyone to do it, and never have before now. Remember the "trouble" Activision got into when they started producing their own Atari 2600 cartridges? I seem to recall that Atari lost big-time on that.

So, has anyone started trying to crack the signature scheme used by Xboxes, so that people could distribute their own software w/out needing to pay an MS fee for a signed disk (or however it works)?

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[jareds]

The point is that it is irrelevant that Microsoft is selling the hardware at a loss.

Perhaps you understand what the phrase "to duplicate the functionality of the Xbox" means and I do not. To me it means to create a device that is not an Xbox but that can do the same things an Xbox can. This really does seem pointless.

I'm going to address the rest of your post anyway.

They've taken their customer's money, therefor their customers own the box, period.

I completely agree.

The manner in which they lock down how their customers can USE their own property is unconscionable, and I for applaud the GNU and Linux folks for providing a Free and legal means for the customer to reacquire control of their own property, back from the hands of those who think nothing of designing a business model that requires and presupposes invasive violations of individual privacy and liberty in order to be successful.

Just because you want a device to do something, such as run unsigned software, and it can't, does not mean that your freedom to use the device is restricted. My car won't go 200 mph, but GM didn't restrict my freedom or liberty by building it so it can't do that. If you think a game console that only runs MS-signed games isn't worth $200, don't buy it. Also, I really don't see where privacy violations come in.

That said, there's nothing wrong with modifying a device you buy so that it can do additional things, and I also applaud the folks who reverse engineered it, but don't whine because it will only do what it's advertised to do off the shelf.

Re:Legal HomeBrew Application ??

[AftanGustur]

Perhaps you understand what the phrase "to duplicate the functionality of the Xbox" means and I do not. To me it means to create a device that is not an Xbox but that can do the same things an Xbox can. This really does seem pointless

I think you are confusing *freedom to duplicate* functionality with "actually doing it".
"Actually doing it" does seem pointless. But the freedom to "do it" is not, and has a value. (othervise Microsoft wouldn't have taken it away).

You wrote:
The FSF won't let you distribute programs linked against their libraries unless you comply with their license either.

Now, maybe you were just writing words at random and pressing *submitt*, but I assume that you wrote this trying to compare FSF's limits with Microsoft's limits. Please correct me if that was not the case.

Just because you want a device to do something, such as run unsigned software, and it can't, does not mean that your freedom to use the device is restricted. My car won't go 200 mph, but GM didn't restrict my freedom or liberty by building it so it can't do that.

It's funny that you are actually providing the counter-arguments to you own arguments. Just read over what you wrote ;-)

Your GM car is a transportation device. If GM would have installed a device in it, so that your car would not function in Europe, that would be a limitation of freedom. (the fact that you will probaply never need your car to be able to drive in Europe is irrelevant).

And think about *why* GM is not installing a device that limits driving your car in only one US state.