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Xbox Private Key Distributed Computing Project
aeiz writes "The Neo Project has added "The Xbox Public Key Challenge" to it's distributed computing client. The aim is to compute the 2048 bit private key that Microsoft uses to sign Xbox media. If it is a success, modchips wouldn't be necessary. Now many Xbox hacking and scene sites have started groups in order to compete with one another." gee, only 2048 bits? No problem *cough cough*.
Um this story is still on the front page of slashdot in another article
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Since Microsoft is losing money on each Xbox, everybody buy an Xbox and drive Microsoft out of business!
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
mere ownership of a copy of a work or invention has never granted plenary rights to modify or make derivative works therefrom
We do not own a copy of an Xbox, we own an actual Xbox, an individual object in its own right. We were sold that individual object, not licensed the rights to use a mere copy. Furthermore, we are not creating derivative works from the object which we possess and own, and in particular we are not cloning a new unit and not reducing the manufacturer's sales in any way. Instead we are enhancing our own single individual unit, and note that after modification, our original unmodified unit no longer exists, so using language appropriate to non-destructive duplication of electronic data is entirely inappropriate here.
Poor legal advice
It's not legal advice, it's commonsense advice. When the law is out of step with commonsense, it no longer fulfils its purpose of serving the people and gets widely ignored, and that's what we're seeing already. It'll probably get worse too, if the legal and political professions don't extract their collective heads from out of the sand and realize that the best way of serving big business is by serving the consumer from which all the profits of big business are derived. The current strategy of kicking the consumer is so shortsighted that it's scary that people can be so blind and stupid.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra