Hacking the XBox

Peter Wayner writes: "If you're a handicapped Windows user, Microsoft offers suggestions and assistance -- but XBox users were out of luck until Andrew 'Bunnie' Huang finished his book Hacking the XBox. Don't be fooled by the title. Officially, Huang's excellent book is not about helping the differently-abled. That would be against the law. Huang was forced by the DMCA to hide his humanitarianism under the cloak of 'reverse engineering' because this is one of the few legitimate uses given a small amount of protection by the law. But if you've got an urge to help the handicapped or any other reason to tinker with your XBox, buy this book before the Man sees through this ruse." Read on for the rest of Peter's review. Hacking the XBox author Andrew "Bunnie" Huang pages 288 publisher No Starch Press rating 9 reviewer Peter Wayner ISBN 1593270291 summary How and why to crack the seal on your 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.

Comments

What???

[flynt]

Would someone please explain in the "other English" simply what the summary of this article is trying to state? I have unusally high reading comprehension skills, but that paragraph has withstood repeated attempts on my part to retrieve any useful information from it!

Thanks in advance!

Re:What???

[Alan Partridge]

I know what you're saying, but it becomes clear (er) upon reading the rest of the dreadful piece.

More life wasting content from Dashslot.

Re:What???

[sheriff_p]

For those of you who don't have to regularly deal with non-native speakers:

"Officially, Huang's excellent book is not about helping the differently-abled. That would be against the law."

Apparently helping the handicapped to use the xBox would be illegal (because of the DMCA, allegedly). That is why the book is called 'Hacking the xBox', and not 'Helping the handicapped use the xBox'.

"Huang was forced by the DMCA to hide his humanitarianism under the cloak of 'reverse engineering' because this is one of the few legitimate uses given a small amount of protection by the law."

The DMCA does allow some legal reverse-engineering (according to this), which is why Huang's book is meant to appear as a guide to that, rather than as a guide to (illegally) helping disabled people use the xBox.

"But if you've got an urge to help the handicapped or any other reason to tinker with your XBox, buy this book before the Man sees through this ruse."

So if you want to help the handicapped, or do other funky things with your xBox, buy this book, before Microsoft sues the author for helping the disabled.

Re:What???

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Yes, that is absolutely true, there is no exemption in the DMCA for reverse-engineering for the purposes of accessibility. If you are blind and the DRM on your new operating system doesn't explicitly allow you to transfer the contents of an e-book to a Braille or audio device, then you are screwed.

This in in contrast Australian version. which I know for sure allows such reverse-engineering, and the European version, which I am pretty sure allows it.

Looks like an interesting book.

[Meat Blaster]

Some of the stuff seems alright; putting a green LED on the XBOX instead of the blue one is pretty innocous. But I'm kind of wondering if he's trudging into the grey area with putting a real USB cable on.

It doesn't seem logical that we shouldn't be able to modify hardware that we buy, but from the business perspective these consoles are being sold at a loss -- if we can turn them into PCs, both the console manufacturer and the PC manufacturers are going to feel the hurt. Not that I'm arguing that the DMCA makes sense, but some of this information probably shouldn't be widely known (thinking of the IDE card that could be changed into a RAID card at one soldier point for 1/5th of the cost of the RAID card from the company.)

Re:Looks like an interesting book.

[realdpk]

All products being sold can and probably will be modified by someone. If the company choses to sell their product at a loss, it's their own problem if they can't make up for that profit - not the general public's. We have no responsibility to them.

With regards to the IDE card - the company made a conscious decision to build a cheap RAID card that could act as a straight IDE card. Someone figured it out. Tough nuts to them - they made their choice. They could have, for only a little bit more cost, made the devices incapable of being both (on the IDE ones, the chips destined for the IDE-only boards could have been physically identical, but had the RAID portion zero'd out at the chip fab).

Re:Looks like an interesting book.

[Malicious]

That's like saying they shouldn't publish shop manuals for cars, because people might use them to install illegal nitrous kits, etc...
If I bought something, it's mine to do with what i like. If i void my warranty, that's my buisness.
It's when Microsoft starts claiming that you are actually RENTING/Licencing your Xbox from them, that they can claim rights to the hardware.

This is /. we know it'll happen.

Re:Looks like an interesting book.

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

but from the business perspective these consoles are being sold at a loss -- if we can turn them into PCs, both the console manufacturer and the PC manufacturers are going to feel the hurt.

Tough.

If businesses feel that the best way to get your product out there is to give it away for less than actual cost, then that is their shoddy business plan (anyone remember :CueCat?).

Most grocery stores offer what are called loss-leaders, these are the items you see advertised in the weekly newspaper insert that shows 1 gallon of milk for $0.99 and 2 liter Colas for $0.99 each. The stores know that if you come in to buy those items, you'll probably pick up other items while you are there and they can make their profit on those items. Do we really need a law that requires you to purchase X number of non-loss-leaders every time you go to the store for a gallon of milk so the store can continue to sell milk below cost? Nope.

Most groceries (at least where I live) now require a $10 minimum purchase in order to take advantage of the loss-leaders (alocohol and cigarette purchases do not count towards the $10). There - they found a perfectly legal way to ensure they don't take a huge loss without requiring government intervention.

If Microsoft wants to continue to sell $500 computer for $180 under the assumption that you're going to come back to them for more software, then that is their problem.

Re:Looks like an interesting book.

[xonker]

but some of this information probably shouldn't be widely known (thinking of the IDE card that could be changed into a RAID card at one soldier point for 1/5th of the cost of the RAID card from the company.)

In a word: Bullshit. Manufacturers shouldn't be able to use the law to prop up bogus pricing schemes or to enforce their business plan. If they're selling the consoles at a loss, they take that risk -- the law shouldn't step in to enforce that so a manufacturer can make money. It's the responsiblity of the business to create a workable business plan. If someone can turn a Xbox IDE controller into a RAID controller "for 1/5 the cost of the RAID card from the company" then it means the company is seriously overpricing their cards.

The DMCA is increasingly being used as a way to defeat competition and enforce shoddy business practices -- not to uphold legitimate rights. If it continues, it won't be long before auto manufacturers are including chips to defeat third-party auto parts from working with their vehicles, and you can look forward to seriously inflated prices when you need to get new brake pads or whatever on your car because they'll be suing the competition out of business.

Taken to the extreme, I can see a day when you won't even be able to buy inexpensive replacement parts for household appliances -- motor burned out on your fridge? Too bad, buy a new one. Elements burned out in your oven? Hey, a new one from GE will only cost $300!

When you buy a product, it should be YOURS, period, end of story. If you want to mod your Xbox into a PC, and you have the skills to do it, then you damn well ought to be able to do so. Once you pay your $175 (or whatever they're going for) for an Xbox, Microsoft should cease to have any control over what you do with it -- save voiding the warranty if you decide to take it apart and start modding it.

Re:Looks like an interesting book.

[Laur]

these consoles are being sold at a loss

This is often quoted, but do you have any proof that the XBox is still sold at a loss? I know there was a lot of publicity when it first came out a few years ago but in case you haven't noticed the price for PC hardware has dropped a bit since then. I think it is far more likeley that Microsoft is now making money on every unit sold.

Please

[stratjakt]

Couldnt this have been reviewed by someone whos not a knee-jerk reactionary idiot? What a bunch of tripe.

Tip: If you wanted to develop some sort of controller for the handicapped, you can go right ahead - legally.

So all in all, is the book informative? Is there any neat technical information that would be of interest to anyone? Or is it a pseudo-politacal RMS-like diatribe about "big gub'ment and how Micro$oft is t eh suck".

Re:Please

[Voltronalpha]

What exactly do you think is legal?

I for one will never acknowledge any law that says I can't do whatever I want with my possesions in the privacy of my own home NOT hurting myself OR others directly with said item. Forget legality; think ethically.

Yeah, blind people playing

[gazbo]

Video games. Uh, huh.

Also, nice to see the general 'hey, lets take advantage of the good nature people show towards the disabled to get our lame-ass X-Box cracks out' theme here. /. hits new low.

Re:Yeah, blind people playing

[dr_dank]

Video games. Uh, huh

If you think thats bad, I donated my old car to Federation for the Blind last month.

Re:Yeah, blind people playing

[dgoodman]

I had this next door neighbor once, who liked to come over to my apartment for two reasons: the first was to hit on cute girls, the second was to play our copy of "Punch-Out" on our vintage Nintendo. sometimes he would combine the two.
Invariably, he'd come over, sit himself down, and start playing Punch-Out. No one would really pay attention, because there was always someone playing the nintendo: it was something we were used to.
Eventually he would make it to Mike Tyson. This is where people would start paying attention; a murmur would rise up: "hey, he's about to beat the game again! let's watch!". And he'd beat Mike Tyson. Then whoever hadn't been to my apartment before would be informed that the player was totally blind, and he would either play the game again just to annoy the person, or hit on her if she was cute (how would he know, you ask? well, that's a different story. let's just say my friend was pretty damn smooth...)
Turns out Punch-Out provides lots of audio cues; since he wasn't distracted by the images on the screen, he was actually much better than most. He hated that most games' use of sound was of no use to the blind...

Re:Yeah, blind people playing

[iabervon]

It would have been really funny to replace the TV with just a speaker one day, and see how long everybody else could pretend that nothing was unusual. "Hmm... everybody else really sucks today. I wonder why?"

Why the XBox is bad for Microsoft

[heironymouscoward]

Just an idea.

Many people run Windows solely for the games.
Without the games, switching to Linux is easier.
Now move all the games to Xboxes.

Voila! The desktop is now unencumbered and can
move to Linux easily.

So stop trying to hack the XBox and promote it
instead. Port all those cool Windows games?

Yay, go XBox!!

Re:Why the XBox is bad for Microsoft

[gspr]

Well, selling it at a loss means that MS is slowly gaining a higher and higher game console market share. With Sony and Nintendo out of the way in a few years time, and a continued shift by game developers towards the Xbox platform instead of the PC, Microsoft will have created their own, controlled platform. Yes, the Xbox is just a PC, but maybe that will change... What about the next Xbox? With the ever-increasing popularity of the console, Microsoft is slowly making their dream come true; control of the hardware.

Re:Why the XBox is bad for Microsoft

[Lord_Slepnir]

The XBox is, in reality, a "testing ground" for creating a computer that a user has no control over whatsoever.

Do you wear a tin foil hat or an aluminum foil hat?

Seriously, though. If it's a testing ground for a computer that the user has no control over, we can breathe a sigh of relief. Only a couple of years after its introduction, and we can hack it to do all kinds of things we shouldn't.

And even if they are developing with Intel a perfect computer, one that you can't hack no matter what, it still wouldn't make a difference. You'll still be able to use your old computer to your heart's content, not to mention that AMD and other companies that Microsoft didn't contract with to make this UberKomputer will continue to make new x86 hardware that will still run Windows. And the bussiness sector will still continue to run Windows, at least for a few years. All of the sys admins that I know where I work would never let in a piece of hardware or software in that they coudn't modify. We have Novell security on our windows boxes, and we get regular hardware upgrades. All it would take is one virus that could target the UberKomputer and only the UberKomputer to convince bussiness that switching is a Bad Idea(TM), and that a diverse system is the best way to go.

Re:Why the XBox is bad for Microsoft

[drinkypoo]

You're missing something. The market has room for first place, second place... and Nintendo. Sometimes Nintendo has been first place, but back in those days (HINT: NES) there was room for more contenders because Nintendo paved the way for the insurgence of the video game into everyone's homes. Oh sure, you'd think it was the Atari VCS, but the NES was the first really compelling platform. The 2600/VCS brought games home to the wide markets to begin with, but the NES brought them to people of "all walks of life". At least, that's how I see it :P

Sony and Nintendo will not be out of the way. Sony's next-generation console will be competitive - PS2 is after all still competitive with Xbox and at the moment still has more interesting games, though that will likely change soon enough what with the ease of Xbox porting. Meanwhile, Nintendo seems to be excellent at bringing out consoles which attract young and old gamers alike. I do think they screwed up when they brought out the gamecube with no DVD playing support. If you're going to use DVD technology, spend the ten bucks and give us DVD playback, we obviously want it. I think that hurt sales more than anything else you might say about gamecube, especially since all the consoles currently available have extremely similar controllers and are all in the same processing power and graphics ability neighborhood.

Re:Why the XBox is bad for Microsoft

[gamgee5273]

No, he's right. If you look at some of the interviews, etc., you'll learn that the motivation is to get into the living room - not to create great game consoles. They want to create an uber-Xbox that does all soerts of things. Let's look at a few things:

1) "Xbox" is a pretty generic name (about as generic as "iPod" - but I'll leave that where its at). It doesn't really bring games to mind. A "PlayStation" and a "GameCube" definitely do, but an "Xbox?" They chose a generic name for a reason.

2) Both Xbox 1.5 and Xbox 2 are rumored to have PVR capability (Xbox/Ultimate TV, anyone?). There is talk of media center-like uses for the Xbox (yep - like the computers MS worked with HP on...embrace, extend, extinguish...). The Xbox is already a DVD and CD player, and Bill Gates has begun to make noise much the same to Steve Jobs's "digital hub" talk.

3) What's missing? A browser and e-mail...WebTV. Just drop some of that into the mix while you're at it...your Gamer Tag can be your "@xbox.net" e-mail address or somesuch...

With all of that, MS has its hands in your recreational and entertainment activities. They want to do so - just dig around, you'll find it.

MS wants all your base.

helping the handicapped illegal?

[TWX]

I would think that the Americans With Disabilities Act, combined with the many lobby groups for the disabled, would stomp all over anyone or any group attempting to block someone assisting the handicapped...

Re:helping the handicapped illegal?

[sql*kitten]

I would think that the Americans With Disabilities Act, combined with the many lobby groups for the disabled, would stomp all over anyone or any group attempting to block someone assisting the handicapped...

Sorry, but that argument ranks along side publishing techniques for duplicating PS2 games but claiming it's only a technique for "backing up". You can't hijack a particular group's interests and use them to advance your own like this. Example: you can't steal something from a store and offer as your defense in court "but I planned to donate it to charity". Well, you can, but it won't work. If you want to "hack" your X-box, at least have the balls to do it openly, don't cower behind a person in a wheelchair.

Re:helping the handicapped illegal?

[kisrael]

Actually, I think a better translation is:

Officially, Huang's excellent book is about reverse-engineering, not about hacking the XBox, since that would be against the law. Semiofficially, it is about hacking to help the handicapped, because while that is still against the law, it makes it sound like a good and moral cause to support. In reality, we suspect it's all about hacking the X-box for fun and cranking up its capabilities, from acting as a generic PC to playing pirated games, but as this is both probably illegal and maybe immoral, depending on your perspective, we won't 'fess up to it.

Actually, I sometimes get vaguely concerned that the ADA could be taken too far...I mean some games are meant to be tough for people with no handicap at all, you can't gear everything for the lowest common denominator.

(Though maybe cheat codes would become manditory? Heh.)

Re:helping the handicapped illegal?

[autopr0n]

No, the traslation is

Officaly, I am an idiot who knows nothing about Intelecual Property law and the DMCA. I remembered that one of the arguments made by Elcomsoft's protected-acrobat cracker was that it allowed the blind to access protected PDFs. It also let you do other things, like copy the files far and wide. But I ignored that and came to the asinine conclusion that helping the handicapped was illegal under the DMCA.

Now, I'm going to try, and fail, to use sarcasm to make a point about how helping people who are handicapped is illegal by saying that this book is not 'Officaly' about helping the handicapped because if it was about helping the handicapped it would be illegal. In fact, the book has absolutely nothing to do with helping the handicapped. That was a joke. Unfortunately, rather then laugh, everyone got confused.

In conclusion. The book has nothing to do with helping the handicapped. I am an idiot. I am not funny.

I think that about sums it up.

Re:Where do I get the mod chip?

[Hellraisr]

http://www.xbox-scene.com/ has EVERYTHING you need or want or even don't want to know about Xbox modding. Even schematics on how to make your own homebrew mod chip

Look, games don't *have* eyeballs.

[kahei]

A quadriplegic game could just look in the right direction and shoot.

This is a good example of the 'hey, I know what I mean, so if I string together a few kind of related words I'm sure you'll know what I mean too' school of self-expression that has done internet discussion so much good over the years :)

That or it's a a terrifying new plan to create games that can shoot back at you, even after you chop their limbs off.

Many war movies are saved

[MrFredBloggs]

"Many war movies are saved by the young private who (like Huang) is willing and able to tinker."

Although most are saved by extensive use of special effects, and bags of red liquid which splish and splash when detonated by small amounts of industrial explosive.

Re: um, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I remember back when the cool thing was to take a celeron 100mhz processor ..."

Sorry.

There was no Celeron 100Mhz processor.
It started at 266Mhz.

Either you meant Pentium, or you're just making it up.

From the chewbacca-defense-book-reviews

[gosand]

Would someone please explain in the "other English" simply what the summary of this article is trying to state? I have unusally high reading comprehension skills, but that paragraph has withstood repeated attempts on my part to retrieve any useful information from it!

Yes, I can explain this review.

Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, Chef's attorney would certainly want you to believe his client wrote Stinky Britches ten years ago, and they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself. But ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, (pulls down picture of Chewbacca) this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it. That does not make sense...Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor with a bunch of two-foot-tall Ewoks. That does not make sense. But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case?...Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case...It does not make sense. Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense. And so you have to remember when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No. Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, it does not make sense. If Chewbacca lives on Endor you must acquit.

So buy this book. The End.

Why I'm glad Wiley didn't can my Hacking TiVo book

[jkeegan]

I'd heard about the Hacking the Xbox book before Wiley dumped it, because Wiley is publishing my Hacking TiVo book and it came up during conversations. When the news hit it was a shock - I was sorry to hear his book got canned, and have been following his story since.

With regards to my book, I'm obviously glad it didn't get similarly cut (since I've spent a lot of time on it), but now Andrew has given me another reason to be happy it wasn't cut.

These pictures from his site
(the links at the bottom of the page)

I can see my wife's reaction now... :-O

Would the real ruse please stand up?

[LostCluster]

Somehow, I think this book is more about hacking hiding under the ruse of helping the disabled than the other way around like the review implies.

The fact is, blind people can't play video games very well and nothing's going to really be able to fix that. I'm not sure what kind of hardware hack is gonna fix that. The avenue of having an first person shooter that can be played having sound give away the locations of other players for those who can't see video is really more of a challenge to the software developers... an off the shelf technology like QSound should make such a game possible, but would it be particularly playable is still unknown.

There's no need to hack the X-Box to make an eye-movement control. Pay your license fees to Microsoft and you can make almost any kind of controller you want, plug right into the front of the box without a "true USB" mod needed. BTW, for those of you who don't know, quadriplegics can't do hardware mods anyway for some strange reason.

The legal contraversy around this book has to deal with the ongoing fight over reverse engineering information from being publsihed. There's nothing contraversial about helping the disabled, and there's no stiff legal penalties for helping handicapped people use computers. The DMCA doesn't talk about handicapped people at all, but it has a lot to say about reverse engineering...

The book is called Hacking the XBox, not Helping Disabled People Use the XBox.

what on earth is this guy on about?

[aderusha]

ok, i preordered this book 3 months ago, and read it cover to cover the day it came in (great book btw).

not once did i notice any mention of accessibility. plenty of info on reverse engineerings, useful soldering tips, insight on IP law, and lots of other fascinating stuff - but nowhere does the author mention anything even remotely close to making the xbox usable to people with disabilities.

the author of this review asserts that "Don't be fooled by the title. Officially, Huang's excellent book is not about helping the differently-abled. That would be against the law. Huang was forced by the DMCA to hide his humanitarianism under the cloak of 'reverse engineering' because this is one of the few legitimate uses given a small amount of protection by the law."

i think maybe the reviewer is reading into the book what he wants to hear, and not what the damn book is about. (here's a hint: i starts with "r" and ends with "everse engineering").

claiming the Huang was forced by the evil minions of the DMCA to "hide his humanitarianism" by pretending that the book is really about reverse engineering is not only stupid, it's doing a disservice to one of the best books for beginning hardware hackers i've ever seen.

Re:reviewer slant?

[titzandkunt]

Are you f*cking blind or something?!

Can't you read the frggin' article?

Uh .. sorry ... I didn't realise ...

T&K.

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't just go modding your hardware to help the handicapped. That's not allowed. There are only a few very specific exemptions to the DMCA and even those exemptions haven't been upheld in court.

Consider the 2600 magazine case. They didn't publish DeCSS, they only linked to it. They claimed an exemption for hardware compatability. They were helping people view DVD's on a Linux machine. That exemption is written into the law. Yet, 2600 magazine lost.

So buddy. Do you want to try something that isn't exempted?
Helping the handicapped is NOT one of activities supposedly protected by the law.

A Book, a Statement ...

[Schlacht]

... OR BOTH? Being interested in the inner workings of this 'mysteriously powerful black box' I eagerly voided my warranty early on my xbox. Bunnie, did sooo much more ...

This book is a good read for anyone interested in system architecture, console hardware, or just getting the best bang for your $buck$. I gained more respect for the system once I knew more about it via ,"Hacking the Xbox". I would say that he did a good job putting in content for just about everyone interested. From simple soldering tips to stuff that was just 'over my head' because I don't have the background.

Congrats to getting your publication out Bunnie!

Writing books can *never* be against the DMCA

[autopr0n]

Back when the US had crypto export laws, the book applied cryptography could still be exported. Why? Because it was a book. The first amendment trumped any crypto export laws. It was only when the code was put on a computer that it became illegal.

In fact, the text of the DMCA EXPLICITLY allows you to DISCUSS the circumvention of copyright. It only becomes illegal when you apply the idea to a physical device (or, based on the DeCSS trial, a compiled computer program) and then distribute it.

A lot of people here seem spew random crap (like the completely non-sensical intro paragraph) about the DMCA without actually knowing that much about it(and the GPL, as we've seen in these SCO stories).

I mean, would it kill you people to read the thing?

Control over hardware - why it does not matter

[heironymouscoward]

Microsoft may (and this is debatable) be aiming for control over a trusted hardware platform. Applying Occam's razor suggests they want to lock down the Xbox to prevent piracy of their games.

Honestly: does anyone here believe a large company can build a secure system? Security (be it in hardware, software, or bricks) depends on human beings, and the larger the company the more weak links there are.

Microsoft cannot be so stupid as to actually believe a secure box is possible. It is not.

And... if it was... who cares? Hardware is a commodity and there will always be someone happy to build and sell a 'untrusted' platform.

Paranoia over trusted computing is OK, but don't forget that we're talking about corporations that are basically incompetent when it comes to security.

My two cents

[inflexion]

That review sucked, but don't let it stop you from buying the book. I got my copy last week and can say it is definitely worth the money. It's a quick read (~2 nights) but will help you out with a lot of the basics of electronics that you never pick up in school or more formal textbooks. I don't even own an X-box nor do I plan on ever buying one and I still found this book interesting. Take that for what it's worth.

Re:My two cents

[silentmusic]

I'm a hardware engineer, and I was given this book by somebody (Thanks Jimi) who bought multiple copies to support "bunnie."

I basically skipped to the end because that's where he discusses some of the more interesting hardware hacking. I think that it's very well written and he offers some really useful advice. He even mentions details like why you don't necessarily want to use a heat gun to remove a part that has absorbed moisture.

I could offer a few little suggestions here and there (minor things like recommending Metcal soldering irons) but all-in-all he did a really good job.

Anyways I think that it's a good read for people that want to learn how to modify modern electronics equipment. Even if you're a EE major you'll probably learn some practical information by reading this book. If you're a software engineer that doesn't want to touch a soldering iron, then some parts may seem a bit baffling.

BTW: The Slashdot overview of this book is totally bizarre.

I have read the book

[pommiekiwifruit]

But not the article :-)

Published by Xenatera Press though, not No Starch whatever.

It's great, and relates a bit to what I was looking at recently - I'm a software guy who got sent a few scarey looking boards with FGPAs and stuff on them; I delegated the soldering iron though :-)

There is a chapter on the law which mentions how scarey it is getting these days, but the bulk of the book is about hardware, encryption and soldering, which was much more interesting than I thought the book would be when the girl persuaded me to buy the book. She had a lovely big display of them, and wished bunnie could have sent her a bigger poster.

It certainly filled a few gaps in my knowledge.

My principles ...

[jayjaylee]

... prevent me from reading a book by a guy who nicknames himself "Bunnie."

Er, what?

[dasunt]

I've heard horror stories from Army Majors about Windows PCs that refused to boot after failing to find a C drive.

Isn't this to be expected? Hell, I don't yank out /dev/hda in my linux box and expect it to boot either.

Computers 101: If an OS expects to find operating files in a certain location, removing that location is going to confuse the operating system bigtime when booting.

Windows does boot from primary-master, primary-slave, secondary-master, and secondary-slave HDD positions. (I'll test with SCSI as soon as someone donates some new hardware). What more do you want?

Next week: Criticizing cars because some refuse to run without gasoline. *Gasp!*

Share MP3s to help the disabled

[flowerp]

Dear author,

could you please describe in detail how I could share my MP3 music collection over the net to help the deaf, the blind and the disabled and to cure terminal diseases? If it requires overcoming sophisticated CD copy protection mechanisms would you please be so kind as to describe how to crack them. thank you.

Tomorrow we shall investigate how to hack the government's bank accounts to help the poor.

What EULA?

[tkrotchko]

I bought an X Box for my 8 year old son 18 months ago.

I didn't agree to any EULA when I bought it. He opened it for Xmas and started playing games.

Honestly, I never heard of any EULA. How can I be bound by something I never agreed to? Did my Son agree to a EULA? I don't think so, it never asked him "Do you agree, blah blah blah". And even if it did, how could a court hold an 8 year old to a contract that (a) He didn't understand (b) More importantly, he's not an adult.

I don't believe I'm bound to any EULA. In fact, looking at the box right now, there's no EULA on the outside. So what EULA do you mean? There is none as far as I can see.