Linux Running on Xbox Without Modchip!

NiteStar writes "It looks like people on xbox-scene.com and xboxhacker.net managed to run Xbox-Linux on a non-modded Xbox console. It requires no soldering at all - you don't even have to open up the Xbox. They are using an exploit in the saved game handling of the EA xbox game '007 Agent Under Fire'. It requires the original version of the 007 game and a memorycard you can connect to PC like the mega-X-key or datel's action replay. Apparently you can even build this memorycard yourself using a standard USB memstick." Frankly it seems like just soldering in the modchip would be easy, but big points for being clever!

Comments

first post haha

[ducker]

Nah sounds good but not chance of flashing tsop without soldering, getting full linux to work. Backup games wont work either... yet

First 'what about the money' post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gets the big dollars for figuring it out? Technically they solved Lindows-boy's proposal.

Re:First 'what about the money' post!

[Simon (S2)]

no money. it must boot from cd to win the 100.000 $$$

Re:First 'what about the money' post!

[Anonymous Coward]

He, it DOES boot from cd. What is your point?

Re:First 'what about the money' post!

[Simon (S2)]

read this.

The core goals are to be able to boot Linux on an unmodified machine, preferably by CD without opening the case, but via code directly copied to HDD or a USB device is acceptable too.
and
Solutions must be practical in the sense that a 12 year old kid can hope to replicate them in terms of both complexity and cost

since you have to buy the buggy game, buy a mem stick, write some code to the mem stick, enter the game, make the game read from the mem stick to make this exploit work, i think the ruile #1 is not respected.

but only for now. great job anyway.

first post and wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing. I am stunning that anyone even thought of pulling something so bad ass like this off.

Re:first post and wow

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmmm

could I use this exploit some other way?

No seriously... could I somehow format my friend's xbox hard-drive, or overwrite all his savefiles with pr0n or something?

price money?

[matt4077]

So, does this qualify for the rest of the price money from that lindows founder?

Anyway, i think they should award a price to the person that finds a good reason to run linux on a x-box.

Re:price money?

[Loosewire]

hehe that says it all "That lindows founder" he wanted a higher profile out of this but no, he is still an unnamed guy

Re:price money?

[Anonymous Coward]

award a price to the person that finds a good reason to run linux on a x-box.

Pissing off microsoft is the best reason on the planet.

what else could you want?

Re:price money?

[Lxy]

When the Xbox is yesterday's game console and you can pick it up at the pawn shop for $50, you'll be happy that it can run linux unmodded.

Now, the real test here would be benchmarking UT or Quake on the Xbox against the Walmart Microtel PC. Everyone's whining about how stupid this is, that you can buy a PC for the price of an Xbox, etc, let's see some numbers. The Microtel stuff isn't designed for gaming, the Xbox is. If I can haul ass on UT on the Xbox, it was worth it.

Re:price money?

[ahaning]

Michael Robertson? I thought mp3.com was already pretty big when he sold it off(?).

Re:price money?

[matt4077]

:wq

why not :x?

Re:price money?

[Anonymous Coward]

In many ways the X-Box would be the perfect platform to show off Gentoo Linux's capabilities. Gentoo is compiled on the machine it runs upon, and therefore is always optimized for that specific hardware combination. As a result, an X-Box with Gentoo would be one of the most highly optimized Linux systems imaginable: indeed, it may even be more optimal than a standard X-Box with the embedded Windows 2000 kernel usually used, as it's doubtful the latter is optimized for specifically for the X Box.

Also, Gentoo would be optimized for the rest of the hardware. Most applications, for example, would be compiled without floppy support because the X Box doesn't have a floppy: likewise, binaries like 'rm', 'grep', and 'mozilla-bin' wouldn't need to be bloated with PS/2 support as the X-Box is an exclusively legacy free technology and does not support PS/2, using USB instead.

Gentoo is awesome. You should check it out.

Re:price money?

[dknj]

Looks like someone forgot about the Dreamcast... How much do you want to bet when Xbox is yesterday's game console, everyone's mentality will be "Time to get Linux booting on Xbox!"

-dk

Re:price money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it does. Non-signed code running on an unmodified xbox. Congratulations!

Incidentally, there's a similar buffer overflow exploit in the memory card handling of the PlayStation 2 Browser (shift jis title decode for a ps1 save in some cases causes a crash on inserting the memory card). Anyone want to give that a go?

Re:price money?

[Anonymous Coward]

shortcuts are for sissies

Re:price money?

[Lxy]

I bought a Dreamcast. I love my Dreamcast. It runs Linux and NetBSD. It plays ogg and MP3. It (poorly) decodes DiVX. It can emulate any game console before it. Oh, and did I mention that it does this all without modding of any kind? That *ANYONE* who can burn a CD can play NES, Atari, SNES, and even PS games on it?

It was worth the $40 I paid for it. Every single penny.

If an Xbox can do the same unmodded, it only opens up that much more. Play PS2 and N64 games? Probably. Play DVDs and DiVX flawlessly? You know it. Use that internel hard drive for storing your library of MP3/oggs and take them with you wherever you go!

Re:price money?

[mvdw]

Anyway, i think they should award a price to the person that finds a good reason to run linux on a x-box.

The best reason to run linux on an xbox is so that you can play divx movies on your TV. Beats buying a computer to put in the TV room for that purpose.

Re:price money?

[bcool]

I just use a really long s-video cable from the room my computer's in to the tv room. Add a good wireless mouse and keyboard and you have an ultimate entertainment system. 25 foot svideo or regular rca is $10 or like $2 respectively here . yep, its unrelated, but hey...

Re:price money?

[PurpleFloyd]

Why not just buy another small PC? A minitower case with a Celeron or Via C3 (so you could run it w/o fans, or with one or two small fans in a poorly ventilated area), a decent video card, and such would probably work even better, and you don't have to deal with attenuation and interference resulting from long analog cable runs. Network it to your main box (using nice digital Ethernet or even 802.11a/b/g) and you've got all your MP3s, Divx movies, and whatever else you want right there. Even 10Mbps Ethernet has the bandwidth to stream a decent movie, assuming you aren't on a busy hub or something.

The only problem would be with running games, but the low resolution on the TV screen and low refresh rate of the wireless mouse and keyboard mean that gaming would be difficult at best. If you have your heart set on it, just put Halflife and Counterstrike or something else with slightly dated technology, and you'll never notice the difference. The TV's poor resolution will nicely conceal low-res textures and blocky models ;).

Re:price money?

[bcool]

that would certainly be ideal, but I imagine a small pc would run at least $300. Cables are under $20.

your right though -- there is certainly a loss of quality. I'm using a geforce4 tv out with a long S-video, and during divx movies theres a noticable white band scrolling across the screen. Ive notived this on other geforce cards to. Anyone know how to stop that?

Perhaps a link to the source would be in order

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Here's the announcement in a forum...

Re:Perhaps a link to the source would be in order

[Nogami_Saeko]

Lol... That forum is a good read...

About 50 posts of "He's full of crap, there's no way he could make that work, there are dozens of people working on this smarter than he is".

Followed by "Holy crap, it DOES work".

Oddly enough, few of the original posters put up retractions or apoligies for their initial flaming.

Figures... Everyone is "uber-l33t" and quick to jump on a new poster, but few are man enough to stand up and offer apologies when they're forced to eat their words.

Re:Perhaps a link to the source would be in order

[arvindn]

I had a look through the comments attached to the announcement in your link. I'll happily point out that forum to anyone who thinks slashdot is the place with the least signal-to-noise ratio on the 'net ;-)

Re:Perhaps a link to the source would be in order

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hate to see what they'd actually do with the Linux they load on there.

cat - | eleet
JFC! It sounds just like me dude!

Re:Perhaps a link to the source would be in order

[Odin's Raven]

Oddly enough, few of the original posters put up retractions or apoligies for their initial flaming.

Figures... Everyone is "uber-l33t" and quick to jump on a new poster, but few are man enough to stand up and offer apologies when they're forced to eat their words.

Yeah, silly forum posters. Fortunately behavior like that never happens with the people here on /.

;-)

Re:Perhaps a link to the source would be in order

[Restil]

I get that all the time with my site. Someone will post in a random forum about it, then a ton of people who seem to believe that computer controlled home automation is little more than a futuristic pipe dream insist that it must be fake, but never spend the time to actually confirm it.

I do get a bit of an ego boost out of proving them wrong though. :)

I think people are just jaded. The troll who really IS faking it has nothing to lose, and people would rather be sceptical and proven wrong rather than being had by a hoax. And certainly, there ARE enough hoaxes out there to make being automatically sceptical a reasonable assertion.
But if it's fake, it's easy to prove fake. There's no reason to make any wild jumps to a false conclusion. It only points out to the world who the idiots REALLY are.

-Restil

Re:Perhaps a link to the source would be in order

[mmol_6453]

On Slashdot, the Yeas and Nays follow each other, with an occasional +/- mod thrown in to liven up the competition.

Thats a lot of money they have won

[watzinaneihm]

http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/03/01/04 /1522202.shtml?tid=156
Looks like they are getting a lot of money .....
And no breaking the RSA too...

Sounds like a DMCA violation

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until they hear from EA & MS's lawyers.

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to see how this manipulation is a circumvention of a copyright protection, and how it violates older copyright laws as well. I mean, we'd know it already if running Linux was a crime or an offense.

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[ReconRich]

Only if someone provides a "tool" for circumventing a copy protection device. In this case, no tool is being distributed (written instructions are NOT a tool, unless executable by a machine.) It is not prohibited to ACTUALLY circumvent copy protection devices (of course, unlicensed copying of copyrighted material is), just to provide the tools. I don't see the DMCA applying here, at all. Furthermore, an X-Box is largely like a Ramones CD; I can hit it with a hammer, let my neighbor borrow it, sell it on EBay, rip tracks (or chips) out of it (for my own use); Its only when I copy the music/software out of it and the distribute it that anybody has issues with it. And that's regular copyright law, not the DMCA.

-- Rich

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[Jezza]

I imagine MS will be calling EA to get this game "fixed" to stop this from happening - it'll be interesting to see if EA "fix" it really quickly or drag their feet (after all, won't they sell a few copies of this now?)

This sounds pretty damn spiffy to me, I like the idea of using an XBox to run Linux software - and I don't see doing this can be seen as breaking any laws. I mean, you'd not be pirating anything, or modifying anything it HAS to be in the clear - right?

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[vovin]

Burning Xboxen is a crime, like books, right? j/k

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[dknj]

It's not just EA that has this problem, and I doubt they can pull all the games with this problem off the shelves.

-dk

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[Anonymous Coward]

It is technically possible to write a compiler or virtual machine to read and compile and/or execute any accurate and consistent set of instructions on how to perform a given operation. So where do you draw your line as to when words become a tool under the DMCA? This the problem with this law, code is essentially a highly technical language but it is still a language aka words aka free speech describing how something is done. It is only the fact that most American judges or so technically ignorant prevents them from understanding this simple fact. Maybe if someone wrote a compiler to compile Haiku they would understand. Oh wait, that was already done wasn't. Maybe they are just bought.

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[Minna Kirai]

How much of a stretch is it to call this technique a "circumvention tool"? Well within the imagination of Federal prosecutors (advised by friendly Microsoft attorneys):

• 
  The 007AUF exploit enables arbitrary, unsigned code to be executed on the XBox- not just Linux, but any other program could be run, without authorization from Microsoft or the copyright holder.
  
  Currently, XBox games are protected from piracy by two technical measures: all game binaries must be signed by Microsoft before being playable, and all games come on non-standard CD-ROMs, which are larger than what consumer hardware can replicate. Together, those two defenses make it impossible for consumers to illegally share copies of a single game.
  
  But now, with the 007AUF hack, one leg is removed- an XBox can be tricked into running unsigned programs. This means that an unscrupulous person can copy a normal XBox game onto his computer, manipulate the game data to reduce it's size to within the 650 megabytes accomdated by normal CD-R media, and then mass-produce copies for distribution on the internet the underworld. Techniques to reduce the size of game data are already well known among the cyber-criminals called "IRC Dreamcast Release Groups" (most famously the gangs Utopia and Kalisto). They will remove, shorten, or reduce the quality of art resources such as pictures, audio, and video, in order to fit the game onto a CD-R.
  
  So far, XBox developers have been spared the economic deprivation that internet game piracy can bring. But if the government fails to punish these new hackers and suppress the 007AUF exploit, this innovative platform may become unprofitable, and go the way of the Sega Dreamcast.
  

Is that really too far-fetched?

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[La Temperanza]

Hmm... that makes me wonder just how much the flawed anti-piracy measures of the Dreamcast ended up costing Sega.

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[Minna Kirai]

I don't believe they actually cost very much- Dreamcast was already on the decline before Release Groups became very successful.

But I'm sure that Sega and it's game publishing friends would love to claim that their failure was due to rampaging criminals, and not their own business mistakes.

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[hyphz]

Only problem is, the only "circumvention tool" they're using is 007AUF itself. (Everything else involved - like USB memory cards - doesn't have any circumvention effect.)

So EA can be sued under the DMCA. Whoops! No they can't - MS authorised their code to run, bugs and all.

Re:Sounds like a DMCA violation

[Minna Kirai]

No. Original software was written to exploit the bug. (It's the "included zip file" from the announcement). You can't simply copy any old executable code onto the memcard and expect the game to load it- the hacker composed a special, magic header block to smash stack, fool signing, or something.

That software is "a tool"- and unlike 077AUF, it was designed with the explicit purpose of evading Microsoft's code-signing checks- which are a "copy protection mechanism"!

Okay and now on to some important things..

[1stflight]

Sorry all, although this is a great showing of skill, Linux's battlefield isn't the XBox, it's the Desktop. IMHO we would be better served to pour those energies into making a Desktop/Gaming/Application worthy OS.

Work on Transgaming, work on a driver interface that doesn't require a kernel rebuild each time you need to update your NIC, work on user experience, maybe you've noticed but we've got a lot of dumb users out there, and a Windows -> Migration path would be excellent. Hell, and NT server -> Linux migration path would be excellent too.

Sorry if this is too much of a rant, and my hat really is off the enginuity of the XBox-Linux developers, but I wholly feel it's a bit misplaced. *clink, clink*

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[watzinaneihm]

No not really, all this means is that Linux gets a cheap, subsidised my MS platform to run on.
Should see the game being pulled out of the market soon, making XBox hacking illegal again

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Anonymous Coward]

If you feel like this why don't you do something? No one else has any obligation to do anything.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[vidnet]

Linux's battlefield isn't the XBox

It's not a war. This project is just a good show of hacking spirit. Remember that this is how Linux got started in the first place.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[mcgroarty]

Sorry all, although this is a great showing of skill, Linux's battlefield isn't the XBox, it's the Desktop. IMHO we would be better served to pour those energies into making a Desktop/Gaming/Application worthy OS.

The analogy I heard was that of being invited to a free dinner at someone's house and ending up demanding to supervise the cooking.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Omkar]

1. Linux needs to be ubiquitous. Non-PC is not yet dominated by Windows, so if Linux gets established there, it could gradually take over the rest of the market. 2. MS loses money with each Xbox. If you could run Linux on a cheap, subsidized machine and create a Beowulf cluster (!) or something, then you're using your enemy to prosper -> good. 3. It's a hack. This is how Linux was created!

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[timmyf2371]

Granted, the XBox doesn't make a great PC - it's fairly rigid in terms of hardware, with exception of the very important upgradable hard drive.

With a Linux-based OS running on XBox, you have a machine capable of playing some great games, with a bit of work a PVR using Myth TV, and also a general entertainment center capable of playing music, DVDs, and the like - all in a box specifically designed for the TV room instead of a beige box.

I'm pretty sure this is also Microsoft's vision, however making it Linux-based would give us the choice of operating system and the choice between paying .Net (or whatever they call it these days) subscriptions and paying a one-time fee (or not) for the brains of the system.

Tim

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[jellomizer]

You are thinking like a buisness. Linux is not one buisness they are a comunity so there will be a very wide range of focuses for using Linux. And as with this comunity not everybody agrees that Linux needs to be on the desktop. I personally beleave the quest for the desktop is basicly a useless endever because in my mind the desktop is a dieing computer platform. And it is moving more towards Imbedded devices that have special tasks (Like the XBox, Playstation, PDAs, Server Apliances). This is an important task just as important as Linux on the Desktop. By making Linux kernel as much of a general porpose tools as possible helps it gain grounds on many new technoligies. Things like this is the reason why Linux is more popular then *BSD.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[ThogScully]

... work on a driver interface that doesn't require a kernel rebuild each time you need to update your NIC...

Aren't modules pretty much the solution here? -N

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hacking the X-Box is just another futile attempt by Linux hackers to pretend they have a chance at winning a war they lost years ago.

It's just sheer stupidity, much like Palestinians not knowing when to give up and sending their young on suicide bombing attacks.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[devilspgd]

I'm tempted to buy an XBox or two now just to cost Microsoft some money, set it up as a server monitoring console in my living room or something similar since I don't game.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[lpontiac]

Work on Transgaming, work on a driver interface that doesn't require a kernel rebuild each time you need to update your NIC, work on user experience,

I'll work on whatever I bloody well want to, and so will everyone else.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Hobbex]

The analogy I heard was that of being invited to a free dinner at someone's house and ending up demanding to supervise the cooking.

No, it is like buying food, taking it home, and then demanding to get to decide yourself how you are going to cook it.

Sounds pretty fair to me, but then my "you are a consumer not an individual" re-education is not completed yet...

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Dawn Falcon]

The bug is in quite a few games out there! :)

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[r00zky]

Yea, just compile all modules just in case you will need one of 'em, this is what is done in distributions...

offtopic:
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: ...
Those who understand binary and those who think there are 1010 kinds. :)

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[hthiefshorty]

maybe you've noticed but we've got a lot of dumb users out there

This is the kind of elitist crap that is going to keep Linux off most people's desktop. Maybe you should work on falling off your high horse.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[stubear]

Wrong. The XBOX would be more like a cooked dinner from Boston Market. The analogy would go more like you taking home your dinner from Boston Market and being pissed off that you can;t cook the chicken a different way. If you didn't want roasted chicken then you should have either not gone to Boston Market or you should have gone to your local grocery store and purchased raw chicken from them and cooked it the way you like.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[drzhivago]

Yes, because you are paying them $200 for a console that cost maybe $400. So they end up losing $200 per console rather than $400 from you not buying it.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[mcgroarty]

No, it is like buying food, taking it home, and then demanding to get to decide yourself how you are going to cook it.

The analogy was given to the gentleman trying to steer efforts away from the XBox Linux project and toward more desktop development. Buying an XBox has nothing to do with getting anything for free, and two thumbs up to the people making unsigned code use possible! :-)

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[devilspgd]

On one unit, yes. But, the more they sell, the more they lose... And lets face it, I can buy a low end P2 for $200, the XBox can do a bit more then that... Plus it can play DVDs for another $30. So yeah, I'll spend $230 on a DVD player that doubles as a computer just to get $200 out of Microsoft's pockets.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[garethw]

MS loses money with each Xbox

I have it on good, reliable word that this is not true anymore.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[cyberkreiger]

"the more they sell, the more they lose"? What kind of mathematics is that? That'd only be true if they were giving you money along with the X-Box.

How about "the less they sell, the more they lose"? Microsoft losing $400 per X-Box sounds like a far better deal than Microsoft losing $200 per X-Box.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Dimensio]

Um, if you know what you are doing you can compile a NIC module and install it without rebuilding the kernel (or restarting the machine), provided you have the current kernel source available.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[devilspgd]

The logic holds sound as long as they sell every XBox they make. If they sell an XBox and build another, then they've lost $200. If they manufacturer 10 more and sell 10 more they lost $2000. But, if they had one sit on the shelf and not sell, then they've only lost $400.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Anonymous Coward]

MS loses money with each Xbox.

Now you're just being silly. M$ does lose money on each unit, but that's including the cash they sunk into R&D. Each X-Box you buy is money in their pocket.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[eyeye]

You're new here aren't you!

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[andrewski]

Remember that this is how Linux got started in the first place.

Yeah, I remember. Linus was looking at his Nintendo for days, trying to figure out how to make it do something useful. Then he remembered: games like Athena and The Legend of Zelda had a some battery-backed RAM in the cartridge. He knew that the NES used a similar chip to the one in his IIGS, but because Nintendo wasn't letting him use such software as Music Construction Set and FredWriter, he was getting ripped off.

Actually, I don't remember at all. Linus had access to a computer and a rough guide to POSIX.1 (IIRC). He didn't have to deal with hardware that was specifically designed to stop him from running his own software on it like the XBOX is.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[andrewski]

Some idiots think that everyone who writes Free software has an obligation to do anything at all. These are the poeple who also whine about shit all day like the fact that Enlightenment hasn't seen an update in a while, Mozilla's broken, blah blah blah all day long.

Hey, dipshits of the world: If you don't like the state of Linux / RPM / &c just FIX IT BITCH! The code is there for the fixing!

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[atam]

I think it is because at the time MS introduced the Xbox, they claimed that there was no way you could hack the Xbox to run Linux. Also, they would (jokingly) hire the first one who could do it. I guess there must be a lot of hackers who want to work for MS :-) Considering that MS always boast that they are the technology leader (and extinct the hackers !), the hackers just want to show who is in charge.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[devilspgd]

Long time reader, medium time anonymous coward.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[ymgve]

...with a bit of work a PVR using Myth TV...

So, in which of the nonexistant PCI slots in the Xbox are you going to put your tuner card?

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[MaxQuordlepleen]

Maybe you should try interacting with some users and you will discover that the statement is true.

Of course, I think that what the original poster meant to say was "we've got a lot of users who don't care enough about their computers to learn about them". That's not a crime although it certainly is understandable why technical people would get frustrated by that attitude.

I don't know about you but I know that my attitude towards my car is VERY similar to the typical office drone's attitude towards their desktop PC. I know how to fuel it up, there is a little light that comes on when it is time to take it in for service, and I am deeply suspicious that the technical people responsible for maintaining and fixing it are not always truthful with me.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Anonymous Coward]

Cost Benefit analysis.

Scenario 1: I buy an xbox.
Pros: I get an xbox. (And by extension a dvd/divx/mp3/ogg/pr0n player)
MS loses a little money.
Cons: I lose $200.

Scenario 2: I don't buy an xbox.
Pros: I keep my $200.
MS loses more money than Scen. 1
Cons: I don't get an xbox.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me a place besides boston market where I can get a cheap, (relatively) small, and sleekly designed chicken, which just happens to runs "Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball" when I shove the disc in its ass.

BTW: There was a DoA:XBV nude patch released recently (an actual nude patch... not one that's censored. There are screenshots on gamershell.com for those of you with a twitch in your pants)

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[timmyf2371]

Which is why I said "with a bit of work".

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[vidnet]

And I bet it wasn't 2003 either.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Anonymous Coward]

> Which is why I said "with a bit of work".

Sure.

> Where there's a will, there's a way.

If you're full of shit, you stink.

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[Millyways]

Mythtv supports seperate front and back ends. This means you can use your xbox to play back your video and display it on your tv, and a server with tuner cards seperately to record the stuff.

I have this setup under construction at the moment, I have xbox part of it working well and am just waiting on some hardware for the server.

Martin

Re:Okay and now on to some important things..

[sarabob]

The one labelled "USB"

Theres no fricking way

[Anonymous Coward]

Im buying an EA game, even if it does cure cancer.

Re:Theres no fricking way

[Anonymous Coward]

It's in the game.

Re:Theres no fricking way

[cdrudge]

Are their any games any more that are not made by EA Games? I thought they made every game.

Re:Theres no fricking way

[Jordy]

EA games does make every game with the exception of all the good ones.

Re:Theres no fricking way

[MaestroRC]

haha... When I read that "even if it does cure cancer..." it really does make sense when applied to an Xbox, if you consider MS cancer. =P

Re:Theres no fricking way

[canadian_right]

Grammar police:
That should be: Are there any games any more that are not made by EA Games? I thought they made every game.

But you gain a point for spelling "their" correctly.

Re:Theres no fricking way

[ketamine-bp]

mod parent down! ;-P
It's not grammar!

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:

Grammar \Gram"mar\, n. [OE. gramere, OF. gramaire, F. grammaire
Prob. fr. L. gramatica Gr ?, fem. of ? skilled in grammar,
fr. ? letter. See {Gramme}, {Graphic}, and cf. {Grammatical},
{Gramarye}.]
1. The science which treats of the principles of language;
the study of forms of speech, and their relations to one
another; the art concerned with the right use and
application of the rules of a language, in speaking or
writing.
[1913 Webster]

You are correcting _spelling_, not grammar!

Re:Theres no fricking way

[brandybuck31]

You can't forget Universal Interactive now, who comes along and picks up titles like Spyro and Crash Bandicoot after the original small companies have finished with them and moved on to new projects. Universal then has their little developer groups spew out new lame sequels. EA does put out a few good games (in among the ton of other stuff)

Project B???

[watzinaneihm]

Are the evil pirates making a comeback?

And still...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I like real video game consoles better. Why should I buy that XBox? It is just another pathetic attempt by Microsoft to gain a monopoly in a promising market. But with time ppl will understand and another M$ INVENTION will be gone like so many before.

And why bothering getting things to work w/o modchip? Is there any XBox which doesn't have one, yet? Are un-modded Xbox are still available?

Re:And still...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because microsoft loses money when you buy an XBox and no legal games. :)

Knowing Microsoft's history

[niom]

you'd think they had already created every type of bug. Well, in colaboration with EA they've just developed a new type of bug: THE USEFUL BUG. Now where are all those bashers that say that Microsoft never invented anything new?

Re:Knowing Microsoft's history

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

Re:Knowing Microsoft's history

[Phroggy]

you'd think they had already created every type of bug. Well, in colaboration with EA they've just developed a new type of bug: THE USEFUL BUG. Now where are all those bashers that say that Microsoft never invented anything new?

Sorry, EA is responsible for this one; you can't claim Microsoft invented it. Microsoft still hasn't invented anything new.

Re:Knowing Microsoft's history

[Bert64]

I beg to differ:
There was no such thing as an email virus before microsoft email clients.

Re:Knowing Microsoft's history

[mz001b]

I beg to differ: There was no such thing as an email virus before microsoft email clients.

That depends on what your definition of virus is. The goodtimes e-mail was going around before Microsoft even heard of the internet. While it didn't have a payload, the warning message being sent around endlessly was a sort of virus.

Re:Knowing Microsoft's history

[Anonymous Coward]

'Good Times'? Jeez, you're a youngster. I bet you've never even heard of the 'Apocalypse Now' virus of 998 A.D.

Re:Knowing Microsoft's history

[mbogosian]

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

I'm hoping this "feature" makes it into Palladium and other DRM "solutions" as well....

Re:Knowing Microsoft's history

[drinkypoo]

If anyone should get credit for that one, it is probably commodore. The C64 had a number of bugs which were exploited by a number of programs for performance boosts. This makes the platform tricky to emulate, and it was quite a while before anyone was doing it properly.

Action replay?

[October_30th]

datel's action replay

You mean they are still in business? I can remember having an action replay cartridge for my C64...

Re:Action replay?

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

You mean they are still in business? I can remember having an action replay cartridge for my C64...

Uh yeah, you know that thing called a "Gameshark" in the U.S.? That's an Action Replay, made by Datel, then resold by Interact who licensed it from Datel and gave it a silly name.

Recently Datel decided to terminate Interact's contract and do direct sales in the U.S. market, so it looks like the Action Replay is now being sold under that name again over here.

In the rest of the world it's always been a Datel "Action Replay".

Personally I was getting tired of Interact acting like they'd invented the thing.

Re:Action replay?

[jkeyes]

oh yes and just to note that the Xbox Action Replay which was just released, how's that for timing, is obviously not a true action replay but more of a save handler which you really don't need because of the Xbox's hard drive but hey now they can make a killing because of the new Xbox "feature".

Free...

[elcairo]

Free as in '007 Agent Under Fire'!

Very nice indeed

[Crashmarik]

Its a real victory for everyone who feels that when you pay for something you own it, it doesn't own you.

Re:Very nice indeed

[Trashman]

You know, I'm really disgusted at this trend. If buy something, I own own it. It's mine to do with as I please. If I want to take it apart (yes, I know it will void my warranty) and put it back together again, it's nothing that the manufacturer should care about. (except in a situation where taking it apart will cause me/others harm.)

Re:Very nice indeed

[cowtamer]

Its a real victory for everyone who feels that when you pay for something you own it, it doesn't own you.

Except in Soviet Russia!

Sweet!

[xintegerx]

Great news! This puts us that much closer to being able to run Linux on anything such as a PC! Oh, wait...

A bufferoverflow

[rveno1]

ok all this is, is a buffer overflow exploit.

a link to the code is:
http://www.xbox-scene.com/007linux.txt
it is uuencoded

enjoy!

Re:A bufferoverflow

[Stuart Gibson]

Karma whoring LazyBoy

http://www.xbox-scene.com/007linux.txt

Goblin

This is a The rare case

[turbo-paul]

where a bug in a program

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?

[YOU ARE SO FIRED!]

It is too much of a rant. Doing some trickery with a 007 game and an Xbox to get Linux running on it is not grounds to talk about getting Linux on the desktop or an NT to Linux migration path. -1, off-fucking-topic *and* you're fired. Tough day for you, but at least I get to sleep with Shirley from accounting tonight. Yowza.

Also, please apply the usual 'people-who-work-on-software-for-free-don't-do-you r-bidding' rant to the end of this text on your way out the door. Thanks.

modchip easier?

[ironfroggy]

And illegal. Don't be stupid, taco. The whole point of the non-mod xbox linux is that any other way is illegal in many places.

Re:modchip easier?

[FooBarWidget]

Isn't using a buffer overflow like this violating the DMCA or whatever?

Re:modchip easier?

[Angry White Guy]

They should have introduced palladium on this. That would have stopped the Buffer Overflow, and protected them from viruses!

Re:modchip easier?

[ReconRich]

Isn't using a buffer overflow like this violating the DMCA

Absolutely not. Hacking your own machine isn't illegal (yet). And so long as you are not distributing a tool to circumvent a copy protection mechanism, you're not violating (that part) of the DMCA (Instructions are NOT a tool). And as long as no illegal copying of copyrighted material is happening, then you're not violating "traditional" copyright law. IANAL, but I don't see any violation here.

--- Rich

Re:modchip easier?

[LordKronos]

OK. So it needs a memory card that can connect to USB. This isn't a standard item. So instead of the modchip being the circumvention device, the USB memory card becomes one. Distributing the USB memory cards is now in violation of the DMCA.

Of course, these memory cards seem more legit. They were created for a totally different purpose (supposedly, so are modchips, but the courts see through that argument). Perhaps these would at least stand a chance of being found legal. Then again, given how backwards this whole issue is in regards to the DMCA, I won't hold my breath.

Re:modchip easier?

[LordKronos]

Also, don't forget that with a modchip you can't play on XBox Live. With this method, you don't have to worry about that.

Re:modchip easier?

[vadim_t]

Eh? How is that going to be illegal?

What, you've never heard of USB drives? Guess what, it's a memory card with an USB connector.

Re:modchip easier?

[squiggleslash]

Amusingly, the X-Box security system is considered in some circles to be the "prototype" for Palladium.

I wonder if this hack has more interesting repurcussions than immediately appear?

Re:modchip easier?

[loucura!]

It is not illegal to modify equipment you've purchased.

Re:modchip easier?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many other places meaning illegal in the USA only

the rest of the world can do whatever it wants with an XBOX , the DMCA is your law not the worlds

cheers

S.

Re:modchip easier?

[orkysoft]

Actually, their secret masterplan is to get every object imaginable in the USA banned under the DMCA by applying it in some access control breaking scheme, and so turn the USA into a third world country without anything! They've already succeeded with things like modchips, black markers. Post-it notes might be next, but first in line are USB memory cards!

Oh wait, the copyright holders will still be able to use these objects, and thus the entire USA will be dominated by the Copyright Cartels!

Re:modchip easier?

[Ed Random]

Lemme see... 007 Agent under Fire is used to circumvent the XBOX copy protection mechanism.

Tools that circumvent copy protection are of course terrorist^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h a violation of the DMCA.

Ergo: 007 Agent under Fire is illegal, since it is a tool to circumvent copy protection. Boy, I can't wait until EA is sued into oblivion ;-)

Great. I love US law ;)

Re:modchip easier?

[benjamindees]

Modchips aren't illegal because of the DMCA. They fall under the 'interoperability' exception.

Modchips are illegal because they contain a snippet of copyrighted MS BIOS code that is used to boot the machine. Distributing this code is illegal under regular copyright laws, even in other countries without DMCA-like laws.

Re:modchip easier?

[Doc Funfrock]

USA is the country of the free ... slaves :-) The DCMA is one part of the new dictatorship of the new Bushies... Huahua

Re:modchip easier?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't the DMCA passed in like 1996? Corporations owned our government way before W failed to get elected.

Re:modchip easier?

[Trogre]

The memory cards are standard XBox parts, supplied by the evil empire itself.

Re:modchip easier?

[jmv]

I'm guessing this too must be illegal in some way. Maybe because it's illegal to use a buffer overflow to break into a machine even if it's your own, or perhaps the DMCA because you bypass a copy protection mechanism...

Re:modchip easier?

[3247]

Isn't using a buffer overflow like this violating the DMCA or whatever?

There's no copy protection that's circumvented. A modchip is illegal under the DMCA because it allows copied games to run, which is a circumvention of the copy protection. The exploit to run Linux does not circumvent a copy protection.

Re:modchip easier?

[hyphz]

> OK. So it needs a memory card that can connect
> to USB. This isn't a standard item. So instead
> of the modchip being the circumvention device,
> the USB memory card becomes one. Distributing
> the USB memory cards is now in violation of
> the DMCA.

No, you AREN'T circumventing copy protection by running Linux this way. AFAICS there is nothing illegal about it.

Running Linux on your XBox is not, in itself, illegal - provided you can actually get it to work without breaking any other laws. The old mod chips were illegal because a) they broke game copy protection too (DMCA), and b) they included a derivative work of MS's original Xbox BIOS (regular copyright law).

In this case this doesn't apply. No copy protection is normally applied to save game files. You could argue, I suppose, that "007 Agent Under Fire" violates the DMCA by running arbitary unsigned code. But that's shaky: the DMCA only protects against the technical protection that is actually there being broken, not against the protection not achieving the goal the developer intended it to. Just because MS says "Xboxen should never run unsigned code" doesn't make that the law, and if their technology fails to enforce that for reasons other than having been deliberately broken, the DMCA seems to have no business there. Here there has been no need to break copy protection: it's just never applied. And anyway, MS authorised the game to run, so it had their permission to "do whatever it does" anyway.

Re:modchip easier?

[mrogers]

The existence of the exploit means that '007 Agent Under Fire' is a tool to circumvent the XBox's DRM, and distributing it is illegal under the DMCA. ;-)

April Fools?

[Anonymous Coward]

Timing seems right for an April Fools joke...

Re:April Fools?

[devilspgd]

Yeah... Except that it's not April fools day yet, not here, or anywhere else in the world. *shrugs*

Re:April Fools?

[Midnight Thunder]

If you read the referenced links, then you would know that this works. Your joke seems to be as bad as the posts filling up the thread in the forum on this issue.

Sometimes people only speak when they having something worth saying. Other times they listen and experiment. The anonymous hacker appears to fall into this category.

"True wisdom comes from recognizing that the wise don't have all the answers, and that sometimes the village idiot sees the answer where the wise don't dare look."

Re:April Fools?

[freeweed]

Back when I was in grade school, one thing that always puzzled me is that the teachers would tell us "April Fool's Day ends at noon, so no more pranks after that". Of course, unlike the rest of the herd, I was actually able to compute 'Day' to mean 24 hours, so this one flummoxed me for a while, until I realized that it just saves a half day of tomfoolery from happening.

Nowadays, for almost a month leading up to April 1 (and sometimes a week or 2 after), seemingly EVERYTHING is 'close enough to April Fool's Day' to be a joke. At least in the geek world. Know what? Let's pass a new law: play a joke online that doesn't fall precisely on April 1 (any time zone, this should give the idiots 48 hours to stretch it out), and we install Windows 3.11 on your new P4 3.06ghz baby.

It's really, really annoying that every other news story in March and part of April is inevitably followed up by questions of its authenticity, simply because April 1 is less than 30 days away.

Re:April Fools?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Socrates was sentenced to death for his views, and I expect no less of you.

The revenge of the marketing department

[E/\/\P]

This time everyone will agree when they announce that this bug should be thought of a feature.

Re:Perhaps a link to Ninnle would be in order

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you imagine a Soviet Beowulf cluster of these, all running Ninnle Linux? Truly a Ninnle icon!

Everything you need for running linux unmodded

[FristPr0st]

Here is the website which has the 007 saved games, a movie file, and instructions. http://kotisivu.mtv3.fi/vilz/unmod/

Hmm...

[Squidgee]

I'm guessing the "exploit" (Or creative hack, as the case may be) is making use of bootable memory-card saves, which seems a dumb thing to do in the first place, but eh, better for us.

What I'm wondering is how exactly it works? I'm sure the bootable save is probably altered to boot linux as opposed to the game, but how'd they do it?

Anyone have any _solid_ info?

Re:Hmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

im no expert or anything so im just going to shoot in the dark. they modify a save game and when the game starts to load the savegame there is a bufferoverflow. then they know where the programmpointer is and they load some bootloader code in that memmory area.

Modchip cheaper than the game,

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be much better if they found a magazine coverdisk to exploit. If EA's unintentional bug isn't against some rule it could be used to sell at least one magazine per X-box converted to linux...

Re:Modchip cheaper than the game,

[Angry White Guy]

This may only work with one specific game, but the hackers may be able to extract important info from this, or be able to do the same thing with other games. A console on an unmodded xbox is a good thing, and may lead to a great thing. Who knows what info they'll be able to get from the box now.

Re:Modchip cheaper than the game,

[Dawn Falcon]

Very similar "flaws" exist in a lot of games. From talking to a friend apparently many of the flaws are in EA games, but not all.

i.e. This isn't a genie which can be put back in the bottle.

easier than micro-soldering?

[j3110]

Me thinks Cmdr-Taco has never tried to solder wires onto surface mount components with carpel tunnel or a triple latte without a good iron, magnifing glass, camera and robotic arms.

It isn't easy... just hope those components are caps or resistors that aren't important. I would much rather use software than hardware... Now if only we could crack a key?

Re:Perhaps a link to Ninnle would be in order

[yerricde]

I couldn't find any references to Ninnle Linux anywhere but Slashdot. URL?

Re:help

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Eat breakfast at Kiev
2. Walk down Second Avenue towards St. Mark's Place
3. Look for those people selling used books and other junk on the street
4. Look for the broken toaster oven on the blanket
5. ???
6. Penis!

FBI comes after modchip buyers

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer using the CD only system... ..mostly cause the Gestapo won't come after me for ordering a microchip.

Re:Perhaps a link to Ninnle would be in order

[Dave2 Wickham]

I'm guessing that it's just a "troll" (in quotes, as it isn't really a troll...). I've seen these a few times before they get modded down *shrug*.

Why?

[axxackall]

Can someone explain to me, why would I buy Xbox and install Linux on it?

Is it a cheaper way to have a better Linux-driven PC at home? How much cheaper? Or how exactly better?

Is there any functionality I need for my personal Linux box that I can find in Xbox hardware, but not in any commoditiy PC? If so, does that xbox-specific functionality has a driver? If so, are there any Linux applications supporting it?

I know why Linux came from the first place, why it came popular in the server room, and why it's getting more and more popular on home and corporate desktops. I even know why Linux on IBM mainframe, RISC-based server and workstations, as well as many embedded devices. It saves money, it brings features. But all that is supported by applications. Are there any xbox-specific Linux applications?

So, why? Why anyone (besides xbox hackers) need Linux on Xbox?

----- Right tool for the right job. But not vice versa.

Re:Why?

[Phroggy]

Can someone explain to me, why would I buy Xbox and install Linux on it?

If you (or someone nearby) has ALREADY purchased an X-Box to play games on, it would be interesting to repurpose that existing hardware.

It has also been suggested that Microsoft loses money on every X-Box sale, and attempts to make it up in game sales, so by buying an X-Box and no games, you're costing them money, which is good because they're evil. Personally I wouldn't recommend buying one for this reason alone, but that's me.

Re:Why?

[bluGill]

Because it has TV/video out that works, stero sound that works, it looks good next to a TV, and it is cheap. Sure I could build a computer with most of that, but cheap is already out, a nice looking case would just about be more than an Xbox. Now find a TV card that works on linux. (Doable, but not all work so be careful) Of course the computer I build would be faster, but that wasn't a requirement.

A xbox is a good machine for those expirimenting with linux as a control for their home enertainment system. It isn't good for general purpose computing, but it is good for living room applications. Drop MAME, stella, atari800, etc on it and you can play a lot more games. With a good net connection you can download movies from the internet and play them on a TV, which is bitter than the monitor most people have. (I don't know where to find legal movies, but that is a different issue. I'm sure you can find one though, which will prove to the judge that copyright infringement isn't the only reason for this)

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding of the Xbox hardware underpinnings is that is a relatively generic Intel computer stuffed with unexceptional parts. In some applications a small, unobtrusive, and dead quiet Pentium 700 with an Nvidia video card and TV out is an ideal hardware platform. Examples of off the top of my head: SSH gateway and file server, multimedia play station (MythTV) for the living room, NFS or Samba share. No fans and very cheap.

Re:Why?

[axxackall]

If you (or someone nearby) has ALREADY purchased an X-Box to play games on, it would be interesting to repurpose that existing hardware.

In other words, If you (or someone nearby) has ALREADY purchased an X-Box to play games on, it would be interesting to stop playing games, right? At this time it's hard to count good Linux games. As for *Wine*, it's not stable enough to be used in real life.

It has also been suggested that Microsoft loses money on every X-Box sale, and attempts to make it up in game sales, so by buying an X-Box and no games, you're costing them money, which is good because they're evil. Personally I wouldn't recommend buying one for this reason alone, but that's me.

So, paying M$ for Xbox I will help to destroy the evil? Tell me you're kidding. Personally I would rather donate money to some Linux fund or FSF or even better - buy something from ThinkGeek :)

So, the conclusion is that Linux on Xbox at this stage is unreasonable, it's just a research project.

Re:Why?

[damiam]

it would be interesting to stop playing games, right? At this time it's hard to count good Linux games. As for *Wine*, it's not stable enough to be used in real life.

You can use the box for other purposes while still retaining the ability to play games on it. As for Wine, WineX is quite usable for games, Crossover is quite usable for standard apps, and even vanilla Wine works quite well in many cases.

Re:Why?

[Phroggy]

In other words, If you (or someone nearby) has ALREADY purchased an X-Box to play games on, it would be interesting to stop playing games, right? At this time it's hard to count good Linux games. As for *Wine*, it's not stable enough to be used in real life.

By repurpose I meant use for a different purpose, yes - use the X-Box for something other than playing games.

So, paying M$ for Xbox I will help to destroy the evil? Tell me you're kidding. Personally I would rather donate money to some Linux fund or FSF or even better - buy something from ThinkGeek :)

It wasn't my idea, and as I said, I don't recommend it. Speaking of ThinkGeek, it has come to my attention that I need a tie, and their "ties suck" tie would do nicely...

So, the conclusion is that Linux on Xbox at this stage is unreasonable, it's just a research project.

Yes, pretty much. What were you thinking?

Why is this so interesting?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, we've always been able to run linux on a game console. It's called the PS2 Linux Kit. Is it not cool enough for you that it's not some backwards hack? I find it very interesting that the XBox community is so huge and diverse yet the PS2 community is composed of a very small group of serious individuals (mostly people who really want to make games bad).

Think if we had half of those people reinventing the wheel on Xbox hammering away at the PS2 instead.

I guess I should take comfort in knowing I don't have to deal with 1337 h4>0rs and their demands for inane software. The Xbox "hacker" community is all about piracy afterall.

Re:Why is this so interesting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I know I'm biting on a troll, but the PS2 Linux does not allow full access to the hardware and is crippled in other ways. Besides, Sony is a GPL violator and a member of the RIAA. Not interested in their products.

Figures...

[Anonymous Coward]

And to think...I bought my copy for GC....::slap::

Hm... nice...

[miketang16]

I was pretty skeptical at first, considering when I first saw the forum post, there was only like 6 replies, and all were negative. But, apparently it's real. Overall tho, it may be a cool trick, but it's not going to eclipse the major uses of modchips. Backups, flashing BIOS, addon BIOS, etc..
/me surfs on over to ebay and orders up a $100 xbox =)

clueless or troll?

[gl4ss]

** Also, Gentoo would be optimized for the rest of the hardware. Most applications, for example, would be compiled without floppy support because the X Box doesn't have a floppy: likewise, binaries like 'rm', 'grep', and 'mozilla-bin' wouldn't need to be bloated with PS/2 support as the X-Box is an exclusively legacy free technology and does not support PS/2, using USB instead.**

now that sounds intresting but is totally stupid way of thinking just asking for flames, and dear mr. clueless/troll, if you really are fan of gentoo why don't you just shut up about things you don't know about? your way of thinking and presenting it just would keep any more experienced people away from gentoo. you really think rm, grep and mozilla-bin need to access the input hw themselfs, or that most applications even need to know that they might be talking to a floppy? and that you 'compile ps/2 support' into _them_?
you can compile stuff on other distros too, on _ANY_ distro, and set the optimzation flags to whatever you fancy, most that matters is the kernel anyways.

as a sidenote there is a gentoo-for-xbox project going on(well, on such system i guess they would have brains and have _all_ the stuff pre-compiled since the hw-set doesn't change, and it would take ages to compile everything with that pesky 64mbyte memory it has).

Re:clueless or troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you even read the Mozilla source code? Around 75% of it is dealing with issues like PS/2 vs USB keyboards and mice, floppy support, etc. Do you think that an average app is going to deal with /dev/psaux and /dev/input/mouse0 when the two use entirely different protocols?

Why do you think Mozilla is so large? After all, ultimately it's just a rich text viewer. Word for Windows 2 was arguably a more powerful application and was a quarter of the size.

This is why we need a Gentoo approach to everything. When one compiles a binary for everybody, the binary has to support what everybody has. When one compiles a binary for one person, that binary only has to support that one person's hardware. No redundancy, no cruft, no bloat.

As an aside, the whole of /opt/Mozilla on my Sun SparcStation running Gentoo is 7Mb. Compare that to yours!

Re:clueless or troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think that an average app is going to deal with /dev/psaux and /dev/input/mouse0 when the two use entirely different protocols?

No, I would expect them to use X events, gpm or at a pinch, /dev/mouse (Which although the driver which drives /dev/mouse may change, does not mean that the software interface to the device node changes)

The number of people who people who don't understand the basic premise of device abstraction is scary.

Re:clueless or troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

You still need two seperate drivers, regardless of whether /dev/mouse is pointed at /dev/psaux, or whatever.

Mozilla is unusual amongst X applications in that it handles virtually everything itself. This is why you sometimes get wierd behaviour with the mouse moving by itself or your keyboard map changing when you're using it. Early versions didn't even support USB mice! (I still have an old 386 with a kensington bus mouse that Mozilla doesn't support.) Basicly Mozilla is a platform rather than a webbrowser, it happens to have a web browser with it. The Mozilla platform not only has hardware independence but also does cool things such as draw its own buttons using a customized widget library, parse XML itself rather than use third party XML tools, draw JPEGs and GIFs, layout HTML, and manage tabs; it includes multiple software platforms such as Javascript and i386 emulation, and it uses direct disk access (via /dev/sda or /dev/hda, etc) to handle the file system to implement resource forks and stuff.

That's why an out-of-the-box Mozilla install is about 25 megs, rather than the four or so you'd expect out of what's ultimately just a network enabled rich text viewer.

Re:clueless or troll?

[Darren Winsper]

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. When using X, Win32 and MacOS APIs, there's no mouse driver code in Mozilla, except to handle things like mouse-over events and button presses, and this sort of stuff gets put in XPToolkit because that's just what toolkits do. Whether the mouse is PS/2 or USB is of no significance to Mozilla at all.

Re:clueless or troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

You still need two seperate drivers, regardless of whether /dev/mouse is pointed at /dev/psaux, or whatever.

Uh, yeah of course you do. Look, out of interest, have you any idea what happens when you open() /dev/mouse and read(), write() and ioctl() on it?

I ask because you seem to have absolutly no idea how a device driver actually works or what it is supposed to do.

Re:clueless or troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell you what, why don't you try it?

PS/2, MouseSystems, and USB are three entirely different protocols. You need to write three different drivers to process them. Saying that they're using the same drivers because you happen to use ioctl(), read(), and open() with them is like saying you don't need three different drivers at any level because, hey, you use STORE and LOAD assembler instructions for all three.

Geez. What an idiot. This is what languages like Python and Visual BASIC does to people.

Re:clueless or troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not download the Mozilla source and take a look? I particularly advise you to look at:

src/xpi/frameworks/pointers.framework/mice/drivers /

In particular the files ps2.device.cpp and mousesystems.device.cpp.

If Mozilla doesn't use them, why are they there?

Re:clueless or troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello? HELLO? HELL FUCKING LO?

Did I not just say that they use different drivers? Did I not just say that?

The whole fucking point of a device driver is to provide a uniform abstract layer to user space; so that applications do not need to deal with the fact that there are three different possible hardware protocols. Do you seriously think that Mozilla comes with its own USB, PS/2 and IMPS/2 mouse drivers? I guess because it runs on both my nVidia GeForce and Matrox G400 it must come with drivers for those, too? Holy fuck.

Do you have any idea what a device driver is, what it does, how it works, what a device API is, what the VFS does, how read(), write(), ioctl() etc. work, what "user space" is, how hardware works...shit, do you even own a computer? I ask because you seem like a fucking moron who cannot grasp basic principles such as hardware abstraction via. device drivers. How you even managed to type a whole post for Slashdot is beyond me.

Re:clueless or troll?

[Darren Winsper]

Well, that is interesting, seeing as my CVS tree doesn't have those files, or that directory. It's the tree I do my source builds from so I know it works.

Re:clueless or troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well no wonder you're so mis-informed about how Mozilla works when you don't even have the complete source code!

I suggest you get those files and take a proper look.

Re:clueless or troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

My apologies, I appear to have mistaken your comment earlier for sarcasm. So if you agree with me, why are you disagreeing with me?

Look, I know Mozilla pretty well. I'm not going to reveal my identity, but I'm pretty senior in Netscape Corporation. I know that Mozilla is designed to handle the mice, keyboards, etc directly. Indeed, it was I who approved devoting resources to it. Many of our programmers spent a lot of time not getting terribly far with the code for the first six months or so - I expected them to have had a fully DOM compliant browser within that period, but the thing was development was slow and directionless. It was only when we called a meeting and they explained that the project involved putting the drivers inside the product would enable an operating system style environment at the cost of time that we were able to make headway.

Mozilla is Mozilla. A full blown operating system, not merely a web browser. That's why it takes up 25 megs. I defy you to find another example of anything that size - that's 25,000,000,000 bytes, an enormous number.

And it all goes back to my point: If you want efficiency, you need to optimize. There's no point whatsoever in compiling in every device driver into your Mozilla and rm executables simply on the off chance that someone there might need that driver. The Gentoo approach is the only hope.

I Predicted This

[Euphonious Coward]

Of course nobody modded it up, but I posted a plan for this approach back in February. I'm not claiming any credit, this guy did the work. Rather, everybody else should be embarrassed that they weren't working on it too.

The next big advance will be somebody doing power consumption or timing analysis while the xbox is checking (bad) signatures, and teasing out the key a bit at a time. Then you will be able to sign anything you like. (Look up Markus Kuhn's papers.)

Re:I Predicted This

[Euphonious Coward]

By the way... if MS was smart -- and they can afford to hire smart -- then each game will have been signed with a hundred different keys, and each Xbox will only know one of them, so that if you do figure out the key on yours, only one in a hundred other Xboxes will also have it.

Once the key-extraction process is elaborated, for it to be very useful you would need to apply it to a whole farm of Xboxes -- assuming MS really did do the smart thing.

Re:I Predicted This

[Anonymous Coward]

Teasing what key out? The only key stored on the xbox is the public key, and that key is well known IIRC. What we need is the private key that is used to sign the code of games.

Re:I Predicted This

[roady]

Please mod this guy down.

First, he thinks that he is so smart that he has invented an approach that was in fact tried by many hackers for months.

Second, if this guy was not full of it, he would know that the private key is not anywhere in the XBOX, so no power analysis or anything will leak the key.

Re:I Predicted This

[Anonymous Coward]

>They don't need for MS to sign their bootloader. >All they need is to find a security hole in any >binary MS did sign.

fuck.. that's some seriously earth shattering shit right there.. why would that other selfish prick think he would garner any credit whatsoever? I don't even see him providing any links to his postings on public forums expressing the most basic concepts of an attack on a copy protection scheme.. get hit by a fucking train

Re:I Predicted This

[Anonymous Coward]

and teasing out the key a bit at a time.

I FUCKED YOUR FAT FUCKING MOTHER.

Because a person CAN

[freeweed]

Any need to read further than the subject line, and I wonder just what you're doing here in the first place.

CD vs. DVD

[yerricde]

it DOES boot from cd

As far as I know, "Agent Under Fire" is a DVD, not a CD.

Video footage

[nacs]

Video 'proof' of the exploits can be viewed here and here.

You can also download the 007 save games that are required to run this exploit and view additional instructions on how to get it running.

holy crap!

[tx_mgm]

so there IS a use for that game! seriously, agent under fire is quite possibly the very worst FPS-style game EVER made, so i actually feel kind of bad that people (albeit a small group) actually has a reason to support such a piece of crap.
but on the bright side, i think march's issue of computer gaming monthly has a nice guide for what you can do with your worthless game disc once you realize it is NOT to be placed in your console (or PC) ever, EVER again!

Re:holy crap!

[barryfandango]

I wonder if some third-party developer will put out a bullshit game that includes a massive exploit? People would shell out $75.00 for "Ms. Pac-Man Redux" just because it's an easily exploitable piece of MS-certified code.

So Then...

[Greyfox]

Doesn't this make it illegal to sell "007: Agent Under Fire" since that is effectively the circumvention device?

Re:So Then...

[kasperd]

Doesn't this make it illegal to sell "007: Agent Under Fire" since that is effectively the circumvention device?

Good point. I think you might be right about that. It is after all that game which contains the signed code opening the possibility to execute arbitrary code on the box. This case actually demonstrates a major weaknes in the security model. Basing your entire security on signing code is unsafe, for any large amount of code you will never be able to review it enough. This leads to the risk of signing code with flaws.

What we have seen is a flawed design which was accidentially broken by an insider. But it might not be a DMCA violation, because it is not a security model introduced to prevent unauthorized copying. (Even if microsoft claims so, it is not.) It is a security model designed to control who is allowed to develop code for the architecture.

still trolling?

[gl4ss]

**Have you even read the Mozilla source code? Around 75% of it is dealing with issues like PS/2 vs USB keyboards and mice, floppy support, etc. Do you think that an average app is going to deal with /dev/psaux and /dev/input/mouse0 when the two use entirely different protocols?** average app is definetely not going to deal with them directly, so why would mozilla, i would rather say that around less than 1% of it is the part that even talks to the host os? ** This is why we need a Gentoo approach to everything. When one compiles a binary for everybody, the binary has to support what everybody has. When one compiles a binary for one person, that binary only has to support that one person's hardware. No redundancy, no cruft, no bloat.* in the world of xbox everybody has the same hardware. and no, i don't have read the mozilla source code(fully, but then again, who has?), but i would guess most of the bloat in the source comes supporting a wide range of architechtures to compile for and from having the user interface in xul(and generally, being a big hunking pile of programs and capable of rendering the pages correctly). and i except it to talk to the operating system(/ windowing system) rather than to talk straight to the hardware to not break everything when hardware changes and to generally keep it in good check. i don't run plain mozilla, i prefer phoenix(because it's faster, more lightweight, without the things that _really_ bloat mozilla, no extra crap). besides, the systems where running gentoo for the sake of optimizations would be really worth it are too slow to compile on, otherwise it's just tinkering above general optimazation flags..

i figured this out a long time ago!

[Anonymous Coward]

geez! all you gotta do is turn on the x-box, pull the memcard in and out 5 times, do 10 jumping jacks, slap your ass, and chug a beer. seriously, it amazes me that anyone would mess with an x-box that long to uncover something THAT obscure, and then use it to run linux. why are they so obsessed with running linux on the x-box? i know that hacking stuff is fun, but think about it: slow processor, good video card but you'll never have a driver for it, bastardized USB, small HD, shared RAM (and not very much of it)...the list goes on. just build a little budget PC! you can easily and cheaply build a mini-ATX that can smoke the x-box.

prior art

[frovingslosh]

I've been taking note of when a system does something unexpected and putting it to "good use" since the 60's. It's a primary form of hacking. Many bugs, like this one, are useful, just not useful in a way the author intended or may have wanted.

This won't be the only one....

[pi_rules]

I haven't followed the X-Box hacking projects out there, but if this is the first person to try a buffer-overflow on an existing certified game then I'll bet we're onto something here. With the plethora of games coming out that are coded under tight deadlines I'd imagine there's going to be a rather large number of buffer overflows found in stuff like this. The reading of a saved-game from the memory chip is a great one. I'd imagine you could do something similiar when games need to pull data from the hard drive too. On top of that, with things going online there's a high probability (in my mind) that buffer overflows will exist within the networking code.

Now, there are two ways MS can entirely prevent this. One is to re-structure the X-box OS so that buffer overflows just cannot occur. There are theoritical techniques for this if I'm not mistaken; but nobody's got a horribly good reason to do this. MS does now I guess.

Or, MS could do a security audit on all the code for a game before it comes out and verify that it's free of buffer overflows. Baahahaha!

Re:This won't be the only one....

[Anonymous Coward]

...re-structure the X-box OS so that buffer overflows just cannot occur.

LOL... If M$ knew how to do that, you'd think they'd put it in XP server.

Mega X-Key

[savvy]

http://www.xbox-saves.com/ is where you can find more info on the Mega X-Key mentioned in the article, and they also have the save needed to get linux going in their saves archive.

I knew it!

[Sludge]

I'm a console fan -- not a console hacker. But I mentioned this to people I know who worked on console games a few years ago and they all said it was possible.

The only way to protect against it is to provide an API for writing to the memory card/hard drive that closes off all possibilities for buffer overflows, and then lock out people from "programming the metal" directly.

Re:I knew it!

[groomed]

WHAT EVER. Keep paddling, your ship is about to fall out of the sky.

Suddenly...

[Anonymous Coward]

...sales of the 007 game skyrocket. EA has no explanation. "I guess we just made a really great game," a spokesperson announces.

I have a GOOD use for this

[Psykechan]

People are asking "Why Xbox Linux?" and others are responding with "Why not?", well I have a legitimate reason for wanting Linux on an unmodded Xbox.

My Xbox is going back to MS as they have attempted to fix a problem several times and have so far been unsuccessful. This time, they're considering swapping systems for a new one, which I'm fine with except for one thing: Loss of saved games.

They will not just swap drives as it would save them at least 5 minutes of work, so I will lose all of my info on the HD.

With Linux running on my unmodded Xbox, I could possibly FTP the data elsewhere and restore it on the new system. This makes so much sense to me that I wonder why there is no way of doing it by default.

Microsoft's idea is to purchase their Memory Units and backup this way. Problem is, since each Xbox comes with a hard drive, no developer tries to make the smallest possible size save file. I would need several MUs to backup my data. Plus, some files cannot even be copied to a MU which means they cannot be backed up at all.

Some form of backup should exist to relieve this problem. I think that this could be it.

Re:I have a GOOD use for this

[Rob Simpson]

I bought a USB link for my PS2 - it lets me copy saved games from the memory cards to my PC's hard drive. Doesn't the X-Box have anything similar?

The hard drive one of the main reasons I didn't buy an X-Box - the "Microsoft is Evil" thing was a relatively minor concern. I just knew it would be a major pain in the ass. My PS2, Gamecube, and PC are enough for me.

Re:I have a GOOD use for this

[Psykechan]

There are certain files that will not fit on a memory unit. There are others which will not copy to a memory unit. The DOA3 save file is one that comes to mind. It just doesn't have an option to transfer.

Yes there are devices to transfer to a PC. It just doesn't solve every file backup problem.

Offtopic, The Xbox manual also talks about MS not being responsible for virus attacks. Does this mean that they will release a virus scanner? Probably not. Once someone writes virii that exploit some hole in networked Xboxes, there will be problems.

And now I has linux...

[Derekh007]

So, lets say I'm running linux on the xbox this way - all fine and dandy, I can run emus, and play around with linux..... But, once I've done so, can I still play normal games? I mean, I still think there are SOME xbox games worth playing!:-)

Re:And now I has linux...

[janda]

The exploit uses a buffer overflow to insert new code after the game has been verified as "being good". If you want to play something else, all you'd need to do is remove 007 game, insert new game, press "reset".

Now un-modded X-Boxen can work on cracking the key

[Xanthra47]

Am I jumping the gun here or does this opens up the beautifully ironic possiblity of using untold numbers of un-modded X-Boxen to find the Private Key that is used to sign X-box code ? I don't know about you but I'm off to get the hardware and the game to give this a try...

A plot by EA?

[iamacat]

1. Release a game with buffer overrun
2. Leak information to XBox-Linux community
3. Profit!!!!

They could even get the lindows.com award money if they did it right.

Re:A plot by EA?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Release a game with buffer overrun
2. Leak information to XBox-Linux community
3. Profit!!!!

alternatively:
1. Sell the key that Miro$oft undoubtedly gives them under a NDA to the highest bidder.
2. Profit!!!!

Re:A plot by EA?

[Bastian227]

I don't think their plan was that well thought out. Like the Underpants Gnomes, here's their real plan:

1. Release a game with buffer overrun
2.
3. Profit!!!!

Microsoft Tax

[MrWa]

It always seems that someone complains about the "Microsoft Tax" when discussing running Linux on a regular computer. Why, then, is going out of the way to Linux to run on hardware bought from Microsoft that wonderful??

I can understand the coolness factor - the need to hack something. It just seems...ironic, I guess, that a community so vehemently opposed to Microsoft feels the need to acknowledge Microsoft at every turn. I would think that every little step independant (i.e. NOT directly opposed to Microsoft but, rather, truly original, unique, groundbreaking, etc.) would be much more impressive. As long as Microsoft is the "leader", in that the Linux community feels the need to mimick Microsoft, then Microsoft has a legitimate claim that they innovate (ignoring the obvious parts that were embraced and extended) - if the Free Software groups feel the need to mimick and follow Microsoft at every turn, then obviously Microsoft is doing something right.

Re:Microsoft Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about finding an affordable PC to run Linux on, that's easy. It's about thumbing your nose at MS and Palladium, and doing what should not be possible.

Re:Microsoft Tax

[troff]

There's also the fact that Microsoft lose money on every X-Box (hardware-wise); that their profit(!!! :-) ) model is based on "the first hit's free" and then raking in on all the games. I'm sure a lot of people will remember that and then think they're "sticking it to the man"...

Re:Microsoft Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the Microsoft tax return..

palladium next ?

[wotevah]

So I guess that kind of answers the question I asked in this post on whether Palladium will be as secure as they think or not.

Don't you own the xbox you've mod-chipped?

[StupidKatz]

... and is that not "illegal?"

The proper phrase should be "should not be illegal to modify equipment ..." However, this is America. :/

I doubt it

[lowe0]

Not likely that MS would care. MS wants control over 2 things:

1. Are you able to pirate games?
2. Are publishers able to sell Xbox games without paying license fees?

This is a cool tech hack, but I don't think it easily enables either of the above. Hence, I don't think MS is going to whip out the lawyers (at their own expense, and incurring negative publicity) to fight this.

New slogan

[stud9920]

EA Games. Challenge DMCA !

In other news...

[darqchild]

The popular game "007: Agent under fire" was pulled from store shelves today, under threat of legal action from microsoft.

The software was found to be illegal by the standards of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, in that it allowed users to potentially run bootleg computer games.

Microsoft's decision was backed firmly by the RIAA, MPAA..

Re:Now un-modded X-Boxen can work on cracking the

[Anonymous Coward]

a) you should start worrying about the heat death of the universe before you worry about breaking that key unless there are some SERIOUS fucking leaps in number theory sometime soon

b) who the fuck cares now? this is the end to that means

Not quite...

[boola-boola]

"Frankly it seems like just soldering in the modchip would be easy, but big points for being clever!"

This depends on whether or not you are actually good at soldering. I for one have destroyed many PSX's in the past due to my clumsiness. Regardless, CT forgot one important fact: if you mod your XboX, you will _permanently_ (well, without some creative hacking and another Xbox, which, in having one already defeats the purpose) lose the ability to use Xbox Live, as the Xbox's unique,internal serial number will become banned.

Re:Not quite...

[ymgve]

It's not permanent, and 'creative hacking' is limited to cutting a modchip wire or unseating the modchip itself. (Those guys that thought it was a good idea to just overwrite Microsoft's own BIOS might have a harder time, though.)

Teasing out the key won't help

[Paul Crowley]

You've missed the point of using a public-key signature checking algorithm. The Xbox doesn't have any secrets you can "tease out" by this or any other means - AIUI the key the Xbox uses to check signatures is already well known. You might as well do the signature checking on your own PC and do the timing analysis on that for all the good it'll do you.

This is a crime,why boost the sales of an EA game?

[Cornelius Chesterfie]

I'm paraphrasing one of his lines in the FAQ:

Q: What if Microsoft removes Agent Under Fire from the shelves?
A: Don't worry, AUF is one of many games to have this bug.

What I don't understand is why he would pick AUF as the main game if he had multiple choices, and give EA a software sales boost? That's not "screwing MS" (which I'm sure is half the reason for this whole project), that's screwing the entire Xbox gaming community who have to endure horrible ports of horrible EA games with horrible graphics.

Why not a Sega game? Why not a Tecmo game? Why not a game from any other REAL developer who properly support the Xbox with games they work hard on, instead of the videogaming equivalent of pop music that EA is?

This is a crime, why boost EA's sales

[Cornelius Chesterfie]

I'm paraphrasing one of his lines in the FAQ:

Q: What if Microsoft removes Agent Under Fire from the shelves?
A: Don't worry, AUF is one of many games to have this bug..

What I don't understand is why he would pick AUF as the main game if he had multiple choices, and give EA a software sales boost? That's not "screwing MS" (which I'm sure is half the reason for this whole project), that's screwing the entire Xbox gaming community who have to endure horrible ports of horrible EA games with horrible graphics.

Why not a Sega game? Why not a Tecmo game? Why not a game from any other REAL developer who properly support the Xbox with games they work hard on, instead of the videogaming equivalent of Nsync music that EA is?

Re:This is a crime, why boost EA's sales

[lvdrproject]

He tells you why he chose Agent Under Fire. From the forum post:

Basically there is a bug in the save handling, which has been found in several games, I just took 007 because only one save is needed for both US and PAL game version - for other games you usually need two (or even more).

I don't have an Xbox, and i don't care about the Xbox enough to want to understand exactly what "save handling" he's talking about, or how it relates to Linux, but that's the gist of it. I agree with you about EA though. Commies.

Re:Now un-modded X-Boxen can work on cracking the

[damiam]

If you took every Xbox that ever has existed or will exist and set them working 24/7, it would take trillions of years to find the key.

Re:This is a crime,why boost the sales of an EA ga

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS IS MODDED UP? holy fuck, I'm not even reading to harass anymore

Money?

[sconeu]

So do these guys get the prize? Wasn't there a cash prize for Linux without a modchip?

Re:Money?

[leonbev]

I doubt he'll get the whole $50,000. The object of the second prize was to load Linux on an X-Box without any unmodified hardware on retail software. Since you still need a copy of the 007 game and an external USB memory module, he'll probably only get a portion of the money.

Anyway, you can read the rules here:

http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/articles.php?a id =20030023081956

Re:Now un-modded X-Boxen can work on cracking the

[Xanthra47]

OK, you're right that it would take an inordinate amount of time to search the "entire" key space, but statistically speaking it's still possible to get "lucky" and find the key before you've exausted the key space. I know it's optimistic, but stranger things have happend IRL. I beleive the EFF's DES cracker found the correct key after seaching through about half of the DES keyspace... Sure 2048-bit RSA is a *MUCH* harder problem, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try : )

Damn kids these days!

[thogard]

Im my day we had to walk to work in the snow and up hill both ways. We didn't have any fancy USB data keys or buffer overflows to use and had to enter boot loaders through the computers key pad by hand in Octal!

Re:Damn kids these days!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! You had octal!

Re:Damn kids these days!

[boy_afraid]

You had octal, hell I had to use binary!

Re:This is a crime,why boost the sales of an EA ga

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back and read the post more closely:

"...Basically there is a bug in the save handling, which has been found in several games, I just took 007 because only one save is needed for both US and PAL game version - for other games you usually need two (or even more)."

DMCA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this guys aren't from/don't have plans to go to the "Country of Freedom", or they could be arrested for exploiting and releasing this.

Not too uncommon..

[Zarquon]

(Not that anyone's likely to read this by now..)

The original hacks to run assembly programs on TI-85 calculators was to mess with the pointers used in the custom menu. They only got set with a backup, so that's why ZShell et al. had to be sent as a full backup.

Re:Now un-modded X-Boxen can work on cracking the

[damiam]

The odds of coming up with the right key during your lifetime are significantly less than the odds of gaining psychic powers after being struck by a lightning bolt thrown by a flying pig playing Duke Nukem Forever while winning every current lottery similtaneously. It would be a waste of CPU and electrical power to even begin to try. Use cycles on something at least remotely useful, like Seti@Home, Folding@Home, or even distributed.net.

Good side..?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the Microsoft.. atleast EA will sell alot of there crapy game

Re:Now un-modded X-Boxen can work on cracking the

[Xanthra47]

You're not being very optimistic : ( I'm amused that you've included seti@home as an alternative... Many of the arguments that you posit against trying to crack the signing keys have been arguments against SETI too. It seems that you're making a value judgement here and that's fine with me, but I think I'll be doing both for a while. Thanks for the encouragement : )

yes, I want to run Linux on my XBOX.

[Anonymous Coward]

btw, whereis .iso image? # I want to buy 007 to run Linux ? # teach me how to run this on japanese xbox? :)

Re:Now un-modded X-Boxen can work on cracking the

[damiam]

The difference between Seti and the xbox key is that:

a) No one knows if there's life out there or whether we can detect it, but the chances are a helluva lot better than the infinitesimal probability of cracking the xbox
b) If Seti ever succeeds, not neccessarily within your lifetime but within the lifetime of the human race, it would probably completely change the lives of every living person. For the xbox key to make any difference at all, it would have to be cracked within the next ten years or so.

Now, don't let me tell you what to do with your CPU, but Seti's improbability/benefit ratio looks a lot better than the Xbox's.

Now I REALLY have to have one.

[pair-a-noyd]

I want to run Linux on a hacked xbox with the sole purpose in life is to spam M$ with "F*CK YOU BILL" emails on a relentless schedule.

Let the games begin!

HA HA!!!!!!!!!!

MOD parent UP: Clueful!

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent-parent mentions the single-most annoying XBox misconception: that you can somehow get a secret key from the XBox.

(I'm not sure but IMO) it will

[hany]

Such bug is exactly what a lot of people were pointing out when MS claimed Paladium like systems can protect PCs from viruses/trojans/crackers/...

Yes, it maybe can, but only if a system is bug free (without bugs, which can be exploitable). But if you have bug free system, then you do not need Paladium to protect you from viruses/trojans/crackers/... .

Re:(I'm not sure but IMO) it will

[Alsee]

No, even if Palladium is "bug free" it won't protect you from "viruses/trojans/crackers/..."

Explaining exactly why woud be long and technical even if you were a programmer, but I can proove it simply by pointing to Microsoft's own claims for Palladium. They state that Palladium machine will not prevent you from running non-palladium programs. Well if Palladium can run ANY non-palladium program then it can run a non-palladium virus or trojan. QED.

-

guffaw!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be stupid, taco.

BHahahahahaha.....surely you jest?

;)

Re:guffaw!!

[ironfroggy]

i jest not.

Unlicensed games

[16977]

This kind of reminds me of Super 3d Noah's Ark for the Super Nintendo. On that game, you had to have an existing SNES game (I think any one would do) and plug it into the top of the Super 3d Noah's Ark cartridge, sort of like the Game Genie. I imagine this had something to do with the fact that S3DNA was the only unlicensed SNES game, so it needed another game connected to make use of its licensed hardware. You could look at Agent Under Fire as the licensed game which is needed to run the unlicensed program, Linux.

Re:Perhaps a link to Ninnle would be in order

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to tell me there's no such thing as Ninnle Linux?

What's this on my desktop then?

Definitely Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

25,000,000,000 ~= 25gigs not megs. If you're going to troll, at least get the basic shit right

Re:Definitely Troll

[Luke-Jr]

Actually, closer to 23.3 GB

Re:Perhaps a link to Ninnle would be in order

[Dave2 Wickham]

I really don't wish to know :/.

Re:Perhaps a link to Ninnle would be in order

[Anonymous Coward]

Your loss then.

Last Post!

[alpg]

BOFH excuse #247:

Due to Federal Budget problems we have been forced to cut back on the number of users able to access the system at one time. (namely none allowed....)

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...