Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
I have been pwned because my
So, do they win the $200, 000 Award?
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?
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.
Hah! I hope these guys just happen to have tickets to the LinuxWorld Expo. That wouls be a great place for a demo....
C|N>K
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.
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.
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!
Click here or here.
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.
Personal Website
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!
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
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
Personal Website
Well thats a simple question to awnser. Depening on your intrests you might want to:
;-)
.. posibly extend with those nice linux mpg recording programs to make my own tivo style setup
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
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!
"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."
...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...
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?"
Anyways, this isn't intended as a flame. This is just the facts as I see them.
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?
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."
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.
What kind of world/reality are we living in, where your own software can be anything else than "legal" ??
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
How exactly is running code on a modded XBox completely legal?
" 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.
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.
[also misbehaves on Kuro5hin as Peahippo]
Last I heard, you were *buying* an XBox, not licensing it...
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?
It's the price, stupid. It's only US$200. Also, not everyone needs a server farm rivaling Google.
A brave new one.
There is a EULA on the OUTSIDE of the xbox package. It forbids you from running unauthorized code. And they defend this EULA in the courts because it is plainly viewable to users before/as they are buying the unit, rather than being only visable after you open the box.
Bummer.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D727
So what does this do, exactly? (no, I'm not stupid enough to just simply run it)
http://kered.org
Maybe because once I buy something then it's mine. Period. End of story. We aren't talking about some sort of nebulous "intellectual property". An XBox is a physical good. If I'm not using it to play copied games then not even the DMCA remotely applies. They are getting full access to their own personal property and no one who holds copyrights on the contents of a Linux distro cares either.....as long as the changes to GPL stuff is released anyway.
Incidentally, this is how to torpedo them in any propaganda wars. No ultra conservative Republican is going to come out against private property. Once the money changes hands, it is the buyers property.
Some people have jokingly said That it is not a waste of time as long as we are annoying M$.
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
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.
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.
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?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It's smaller than any of my computers...
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 :)
MOD PARENT UP
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
One with more lawyers than any other living organism.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
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.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
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
this is my sig.
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.
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!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
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.
-- Alastair
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.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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.
That these Xboxes are fun to play video games on.
Imagine that!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
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.
Democrat delenda est
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?
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
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.
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.
unfinished: (adj.)
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.
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
"(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.
unfinished: (adj.)
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!)...
unfinished: (adj.)
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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)?
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. (:
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
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.
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.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc