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Microsoft to Hire Xbox Hackers?

Posted by michael on from the bare-metal dept.

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?"

5 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. no thanks. by Naikrovek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:no thanks. by Naikrovek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When you gotta eat, and you're sick of the cardboard box, you don't abandon your morals for cash. you do everything in your power to live as good of a life as you can without throwing your morals out the window.

      That's what morals are. The world is what we make it, pal, if you're so quick to do the wrong thing for a quick buck, then you go do that. I'm going to keep my spine and do what's necessary to live with myself & sleep at night.

      I'm doing my part to make the world a place less driven by the dollars, and driven more by intelligence. Can you say that you're doing the same?

      Money is a tool, and nothing more. It is to help you get out of the gutter & put you in a comfortable place and be able to provide for your children. It is NOT incentive to abandon your judgement.

    2. Re:no thanks. by Jonathunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Then try raising a family. You don't have the luxury of morals when you have children crying themselves to sleep because they are hungry. I'd stick a knife in the next person if it meant the difference between feeding my family and upholding my morals, and I don't apologize for it."

      Especially when raising children, morals are not a luxury.

      I hate preaching, so let me be plain. If you mean the last sentence about sticking a knife if that's what it takes, please don't breed.

  2. Sony did this with the Playstation by Dimensio · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!!!
  3. Re:Well let me tell you..... by Jerf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.)