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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.