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Microsoft to Hire Xbox Hackers?
handsomepete writes "According to PlanetXbox, Microsoft is looking to hire 'software design engineers' to look into the properties of modchips and detection code for hardware. A background in game hacking knowledge is listed as a preferred talent. Will any of the Xbox Linux participants take a stab at this job?"
As soon as someone provides something innovative to the community, there goes MS buying up all the talent so that they die a quiet death in one of the gray offices in Redmond.
When will they finally see that the best way to improve MS is to allow the Open Source developer community free rein in order to come out with more and more brilliant ideas and concepts?
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Will any of the Xbox Linux participants take a stab at this job?
Why? So they can be part of the winning team that kills modchips forever?
no thanks.
"BS in Computer Science or Computer Engineering required."
There's hacking classes in college? Somebody needs to smack the entire H.R. dept. for weeding out a lot of talented folks.
-Lucas
Turbine Entertainment, who make Asheron's Call (Microsoft's MMORPG offering), have been hiring the people who hack it for quite some time now. Turns out if you are able to hack the system, sometimes you're a bigger expert on it than the people who made it!
(No joke... Todd Berkbile, AC's lead systems programmer now, came from "Todd's Hacking Zone" -- and he's modified some core systems that his predecessors were scared to touch due to flammability.)
A number of games in Japan (and even a few in the US) included 'modchip detection' code that would prevent the game from working on Playstation consoles with modchips installed. Of course, the "protection" could be easily bypassed with either a Gameshark (or similar device) or with a crack applied to a CD image of the game. The result was that gamers who used modchips solely to play legally purchased imports were out of luck while the pirates could continue on without problems. Might have even pushed a few to the 'dark side'.
I suspect that any modchip detection code in the XBox will have a similar effect.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Fortune Magazine lists Microsoft as one of the best companies in the world to work for.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
In my opinion they're concerned. XBox is kinda a pilot for future DRM implementation. In fact they could really gain experience from XBox Linux Project to improve DRM...
Despite the harsh tone in your message which leaves one wondering about your personal communication skills, you probably do have more discipline then most BS holders if you truly did go through the Navy (impossible to even begin to guess with an AC). But I'd point out that I never used the word discipline (note correct spelling).
I used the word rigor. As in mathematical rigor. I bothered to reply to such an obvious troll because it's a rather common misconception. You can be as disciplined as you want, but there are certain projects that must be completed using stronger techniques, not just by trying harder. Certainly college grads don't have a lock on either trying harder or knowlege of stronger techniques, but a college grad who used college to their advantage will certainly tend towards a much stronger comprehension and broader knowlege of such techniques. It's a tendency strong enough for Microsoft to use it as a filter criterion with the confidence that they will be cutting far, far more bad prospects then they will be losing good ones.
(Another problem people have is comparing a well-motivated self-taught programmer against a frat-boy who happens to be taking Comp. Sci. as his excuse to qualify to live in the frat house. Comparing well-motivated college grads against well-motivated self-taught programmers will show wide disparities in certain skills that are importent at certain times, especially those that are the reason we call it computer science and not computer programming in college. This is one of them; creating security (as opposed to merely cracking it) is hard ; it's possible, but very hard to gain a true appreciation of the truth of that statement without either going through the classes, or replicating the class experience by reading papers in the field, texts on the subject, etc. until you might as well have taken the class. You really can't putter aimlessly around a field as complicated as security and expect to do half as well as people who have made a concentrated effort to learn from decades of experience of the best and brightest... usually in class, at least to start.)
To counter-troll, missing the distinction between rigor and discipline is exactly the sort of rigor I'm talking about. "Self-taught" programmers make exactly those sort of mistakes in truly technical fields all the time, and the shoddy software that results can be downloaded from Sourceforge anytime you like. Some problems are hard; it's really a form of hubris to think that you can do as well (or better(!)) then the entire academic community, which comprises thousands of very smart people working together. The system ain't perfect, but it's hella hard to beat working all by your lonesome.
(Another example of poor thinking is exhibited by all those "self-taught" types who see people like me claim a correlation between skills and schooling, and immediately and highly erroneously translate that to "only school can teach you skills, and it's impossible to self-teach", which is general and regrettably has little to do with whether one is schooled or not. Shades of grey, people, shades of grey.)
And speaking of the PS2: Sony, on the other hand, doesn't care if people pirate games for their systems. Why? They make money on the hardware. To play pirated playstation games, you first have to have a playstation. Any rumor that Sony lost money on the playstation or ps2 hardware is bull. They make the thing, and they make money on it.
... is horse pocky. If you think that Sony cares any less than Microsoft about the huge profits they make on a successful piece of game software, you're fooling yourself. The small amount they make on an individual console pales in comparison to what they make on the 6-8 games the average user buys in a year.
For example:
Now I'm not accusing all these people of necessarily selling out, but obviously, if you work with a company, you're less likely to speak frankly about how much it sucks (if only because you have to take into account the interests your employees/shareholders).
Personally, I think its one of those reoccuring themes on slashdot.
"formal education in computers is bad"
And yet every so often there will be a news item on a basic principle of comp science which is taught during formal education, and it will be posted as "news". "Testing is good!" "People like whitespace???"
But what I really think underlying this is "programmer snobbery". A lot of the formal educated people cannot actually cut it as programmers in the field, and shift into the satellite jobs, such as proposal writing, testing, management etc...
Still, I think arrogance in programmers is one of the worst thing about computers though...
And also, I hate the X-box. Because of the reason microsoft got into the market: only to cash in, not to make quality games. Because of the lack of good games for it. Because of the controllers.
Ah... the bias comes out. I hate to burst your bubble, but I'm sure Sony's doing it for the money, too... you honestly think they make game consoles because the shareholders like "quality games"? What next, they make audio receivers because the engineers want to listen to loud, clear music?
Wake up, dude: Sony is a big ol' megacorp, just like Microsoft (except over a much broader range of products). Fine, if you prefer one platform over another, but let's not go nuts on the rationale.
Why?
Seriously. Why? You're talking about Microsoft making money. We already know they do this in many ways, not all of which involve competing in a market dynamic on the basis of product quality. More relevantly, your specific point was, in the end they want to make money. There are other motives- wanting to work in a specific field, wanting to benefit the world, wanting to buy up the state of Washington and turn it into a nature preserve so geeks can go big game hunting with digital cameras- there are motives that involve DOING things or BEING things, positive things, negative things, whatever.
If the bottom line is no more than making the most money, they become a poster child for the ugliest repercussions of untrammeled, self-consuming capitalism. They have NO GOALS if that's all it is to them. They could just as well do it all with paper games on Wall Street and not even care what they're producing in terms of software (and in fact they are doing essentially that). They have no connection to the world apart from Hoovering money and 'valuation' from others and accumulating it, only to blow up when they can't maintain the expanding valuation.
I am serious. Why should I respect that in the slightest? Tell me something they want that's more than 'make money'. I don't care if it's 'control the entire world and replace governments'. That is evil and I still respect it more than the brainless, cancerous 'make money'. If you think 'make money' is enough, you haven't ever thought deeply about what you're doing, or what Microsoft is doing, or what capitalism is for. It's not an end in itself, it is a mechanism for society. Treated as an end in itself it is pathological.