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No-Solder Modchip For The Xbox
toothfish writes "There's a review of the latest generation of Xbox modchip over at xbox hacker- no solder, flashable BIOS, 15 min. install, etc. Stuff like this should make it easier for the average Xbox user to run emulators, Linux, and such. No word if it does or does not work in the latest iteration of Xbox though. Anyone from australia order one of these guys yet?"
I'd really like to find an easy to use set top box.
My mother is basically wheel chair bound, and has visual problems. She watches a lot of TV, and has never used a computer.
She has a WebTV and can surf the web, but her WebTV will not let her watch more than 128K of movies. And I don't believe any WebTV model will. That makes those movies of my kids that much harder to distribute to her.
So I'd like to find a set-top box internet access solution for her. I haven't done a lot of looking, but it seems that the Xbox running Linux with a cordless USB keyboard may be a winning solution.
She could surf the web to see the kids, download and play their movies, print their photographs out, and all from a machine designed to work well with TVs. And when her other grandchildren come over, well they can do the first person shooter thing.
So I have high hopes for this Xbox project. I believe it can really offer a social good to a class of people that don't have a good internet solution.
Then again, if you know of other, better, also inexpensive set top box internet solutions, do let me know.
You win! Give this man a prize!
You're right...the X-Box IS an experiment. It is Microsoft's first tentative step towards a completely-locked-down totally Microsoft-controlled PC. The success of the X-Box guarantees this will happen.
Forget about Compaq et al--Microsoft wants to own the hardware, as well as the software. Keep an eye out for it. The second they slap a keyboard, and mouse on the X-Box, the Microsoft PC will be born (and Windows will "suddenly" only work with the Microsoft-certified hardware). It will be completely DRM from the ground up (the X-box already IS).
Folks, supporting the X-Box only brings us closer to the inevitable "darker ages" of home computing (we're already deep inside the dark ages right now, in my opinion).
The irony -- admittedly a literary device lost on most SlashDotters -- is that in the console arena, MS is the scrappy underdog. Their presence there is a tremendous boon to game players (ardent 14-year-old PS2 fan boys not included, of course). It is the XBox which is causing $ony to drop prices, expedite online muti-player, and generally just keep in line and look over their shoulder. They have entered an industry in dire need of a competitive shake-up, and are one of the few companies with the resources to be taken seriously by the existing $ony and Nintendo monoliths.
Microsoft Xbox -- it's a Good Thing.
Of course, if you subscribe to the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates is the Grand Lizard of the Illuminati and that XBox is his tool to effect a plan for World Domination hatched during the Fall of the Knights Templar, a simple discussion regarding game industry economics is probably not going to sway you much...