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Hacking the XBox
There are many reasons why you might want to take apart your XBox, but one of the best ones I can imagine is making it easier for people who can't see, hear or move too well to play the same video games as the rest of us. Searching Microsoft's web site for documents containing both "handicapped" and "xbox" reveals only a suggestion for how to change the degree of difficulty of your Zoo Tycoon Game.
Someone who might want to retrofit a new pointing device or some other enabling gadget onto the XBox might start with the chapter describing how to fix a real USB cable onto the XBox. The chapter, like most in the book, is heavily illustrated with step-by-step pictures and instructions for clipping the cables in the right place and soldering them back together. Some of this might seem a bit rudimentary, but the detail can't hurt. In many cases, the real challenge is finding a way to take apart the case or the pack of wires in the right way. Smashing it isn't always an option. This is a book about mathematics, electronics, and taking apart plastic boxes.
Alas, just doing a bit of soldering isn't going to be enough unless you can make the right drivers. To help those who might want to reprogram their XBox, Huang devotes much of the book to stripping away the layers of the XBox security system, a story that is part mystery and part journey through the security layers in the system. The book is arranged in a very roughly chronological order. While it is mainly a book that teaches you how to reverse engineer the XBox, it is also a story of how he overcame the obstacles presented by the encryption. He talks as much about the unsuccessful paths as the ones that paid off. (This is, I think, an ideal model for the scientific community. It's much more educational than the terse papers that present the results as fait accompli.)
This part of the book quickly gets quite complicated, because Microsoft obviously tried hard to produce a secure machine that could provide a fair platform for people to play games. Getting the XBox to run any old software is not an easy task, but Huang describes several major techniques for drilling through the various layers of security. Again, he offers detailed pictures and instructions for construction special tools that snarf signals from a bus. Then he explains how he managed to grab the right keys for decrypting some of the most important data. Although it's a technical book, it unfolds like a spy novel.
The book is also very politically thoughtful. While the clueless will equate the word "hacking" in the title with piracy, money laundering, terrorism, and not phoning home on mother's day, Huang frames every step with a discussion of whether it is motivated by good or evil. He's not interested in building a tool to pirate XBox games and points out that many of the modifications aimed at running Linux on the Xbox do not help the pirates in any way. If anything, they make the games entirely unplayable.
Huang does want to defend the right to tinker, citing Ed Felten and others in a defense of something we're rapidly losing. I've heard horror stories from Army Majors about Windows PCs that refused to boot after failing to find a C drive. Do we really want to build machines that can't be retrofitted or fixed in the field? Many war movies are saved by the young private who (like Huang) is willing and able to tinker.
If you don't respond to pulls on the heartstrings, you might want to read one of the concluding chapters from the EFF's Lee Tien about the current legal climate. There are few exemptions for tinkering and many of them are limited. Reverse engineering is okay if you're a big corporation making a competing product, but that didn't help 2600 magazine when they were accused of trying to help people view DVDs on their Linux machine. I can only imagine what they would do to someone with very bad vision who wanted to enable a special zoom feature on their Xbox.
The book was originally going to be published by Wiley, but the company balked when it realized there were stiff legal penalties for helping handicapped people use computers. Even the Massachusetts Institute of Technology felt that it would be better for Huang to disassociate itself from Huang and his humanitarian efforts. The university only relented after pressure from a few good professors who helped the university understand the value in Huang's mission. Huang decided to publish the book himself with the help of his girlfriend, Nikki Justis. The two of them should be commended for turning out such a beautiful, professional book. If you're intrigued by the xbox, interested in helping the handicapped, or just trying to learn how to reverse engineer things before things get worse, check out this book. It's a wonderful contribution to the literature.
To close, I'm offering a pair of cool projects with the hope that Huang's book will inspire people to tinker:
- Sonic Information -- The sound in games like Quake is pretty good, but what if it was rendered with enough precision to let blind people grok the scene? The echoes from the tapping of a white cane already carry plenty of information to the blind. What if they could compete on an equal footing with the sighted? Who would win?
- Eye Movement Measuring tools -- Tools exist for sensing the position of our eyes. A quadriplegic game could just look in the right direction and shoot. Clearly some work would need to be done to encode all of the shift-left-left-down-right maneuvers from the games. This could help all of us. The thumb you save from repetitive motion injuries could be your own.
Note: Since this review was written, Hacking the Xbox has found a publisher in the form of No Starch Press. The original self-published version will probably be a sought-after collectable ;)
Peter Wayner is the author of Translucent Databases and ten other books. None rely on the DMCA. Hacking the Xbox is due in July at bn.com; you can also go directly to the book's page at No Starch Press. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Only x posts and slashdotted! Must be running their site on product "A".
Imagine a beowolf cluster of item "B", on a "C".
Just wait till the RIAA hears about this! and/or Just wait till the MPAA sees this! and/or Just wait till the **AA hears and/or sees this!
Something SCO would do....Or Sue! Sue! call SCO
BSD is dying, only a few million users left!
Oh and MS knows security like they know open competition.
I used Mozilla once!
1. Action "D"
2. ???
3. Result "E"
MS sucks. or MSFT sucks. or Microsoft sucks. or Micro$oft sucks or Micro$loth sucks.
Linux has a far superior kitch factor.
I'm going to patent patenting. I'm going to patent the wheel, air, fire, water, item "F". Quick hide it from bezos.
I'm going to sue for violating my first post (patent|copyright).
Check my l33t signature!
Accomplishing goal A: Cost "G". Accomplishing goal B: Cost "H", for everything else there is item "I".
Something, something, something, private part [giggle like the school child you are], something, something, something.
something, other, something, Natalie Portman, something
Boochicka wowwow, something, hot grits and person "J", who may or not be Natalie Portman
Some guys widespread anus [goatse.cx]
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Is there a hack in this book to help me complete Halo?
Omnis amans amens
Supreme Court Strikes Down Gay Sex Ban
this early post is for the genocide of niggers, palestinians, and jews. kill the jews!
Did you know that all US prisons are now installing windows on all of their computers?
It is because windows always LOCKS UP!!!!!!!
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Dear rotten.com,
I am unsure if you are aware of the problems that your "Incident with the bird" picture has caused on the popular technology website slashdot (http://slashdot.org).
Many users of this site's messageboards are posting links to http://nero-online.org/slashdot.php and making text based representations of a bird on a man's penis. Frankly, while I am pro-freedom, this type of photo sickens me. Could you please move the location of the bird page on your site to keep slashdot readers from seeing things that are completeley unrelated to computers and technology? I'm not asking you to remove the content, just to relocate it.
FYI the text representation of the bird is:
*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d*
p______...__________________________p
e____(_..__`'-.,--,_________________e
n_____'-._'-.__`\a\\________________n
i_________'.___.'_(|________________i
s____________7____||________________s
b___________/___.'_|________________b
i__________/_.-'__,J________________i
r_________/_________\_______________r
d________||___/______;______________d
*________||__|_______|______________*
p________`\__\_______|__/__''\______p
e__________'._\______/.-`____{}|____e
n___________/\_`;_.-'_________/_____n
i___________\_;(((____.--'\_/_______i
s_________.(((_____.-;\_____________s
b____.--'`_____,;`'.'-;\____________b
i_taco's____.'____'._.'\\___________i
r_dick_--'_________|__\_|___________r
d__________________\_\,_/___________d
*p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d_p_e_n_i_s_b_i_r_d*
(Note: CmdrTaco's penis length exaggerated for effect only)
with a link to the offensive site (http://smoke.rotten.com/bird/) underneath, these "Penis Birds" are posted by Penis Bird Guy, Penis Bird MAN and several other users.
Regards, Andrew J. Tosh
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I just read "Hugging the XBOX" ..maybe it's me who needs a hug :/
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Here's something that in a round-a-bout way gives a different angle on this. A reader here posted thoughts on /.'s editor in chief and I think he/she is right on: Taco needs to be a member of the community instead of the madman behind the curtain, constantly trying to defeat the trolls without ever addressing them (thus spurring them on, successfully). Here is his/her post:
/. users...but that's not what you want for the head of a website viewed by hundreds of thousands of people a day.
.com businesses. A couple of people with no real business skills or common courtesy create a product, without any real plan, hoping to succeed. For some reason, CmdrTaco did. Not having learned enough leadership lessons, he continues to be his old self, taking Slashdot wherever he wants, instead of where Slashdotters want it to go.
One of CmdrTaco's greatest flaws is his lack of professionalism and common courtesy. He's generally blunt and rude...but he can be helpful once in a while. Of course, this puts him at a level consistent with normal
Slashdot reminds me of the crap found in the old
To me...it's frustrating. Slashdot has so much
potential. But CmdrTaco doesn't have the leadership to acheive it. He's stuck constantly playing around with the moderation system, managing a horrible story selection routine, or criticizing people in his journal. Slashdot could be so much more. If he let go of his stalled vision of what Slashdot should be, and let people develop their own projects in Slash, Slashdot could be a blast. Remember the BBS's of ten years back? It was a place where a bunch of people who truly love computers hung out. You could chat, play games,
download files, ASCII bomb each other..whatever. There was public forums that were controlled, and private forums that we had control over. Now what do we have today? About 15 crappy articles a day that only get accepted because they appeal to michael or timothy's insanely liberal bias, and journals where somebody posts a thought and we post replies. That's it.
CmdrTaco has so many options staring him in the face to take Slashdot from a stalled mediocre site to a great geek hangout. Here's what I believe he should do.
1) Act more as the owner/manager of Slashdot... instead of an egotistical coder in a basement who works on side projects. This means that he'll manage many projects simultaneously, instead of personally coding a few.
2) Get better staff. Fund them by providing features Slashdotters want and will pay for. (Seeing stories 20 minutes early so you can catch the editor's mistakes is not a feature).
3) Let go of his vision of what Slashdot should be, and openly let others help out
4) Design a system, much like open source
projects, that lets people design and develop their own additions to Slashdot. (CmdrTaco says he wants people to fix bugs and contribute to Slash...but why the hell would others do this if they know CmdrTaco will say "Idiot, your work is useless. We discussed this years ago. It doesn't fit with what we want.")
5) Add extra areas...such as chat rooms, stupidly fun group games, better private options other than just journals....that give Slashdot more of a hangout feel rather than a newsy feel.
Heh, I'm starting to sound like some annoying young business school graduate. "Now if CmdrTaco could proactively change his paradigm to better synergize this approach -- which I will call the B.E.T.T.E.R. -- he can utilize multitasking to provide revenue in a dispered/sharing system." But seriously...I just hate seeing Slashdot with so much potential. I know I could have a blast and find tons of friends here. But looking back at CmdrTaco's past - little common courtesy and his contept for ideas that aren't his own - , it's pretty certain Slashdot will remain mediocre
and unprofessional.
Well, i'm not one to hide. at least i got one 'Funny' in with the redundant, and the flamebait. eh, fuckit
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NO! i'm the real batman!!
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