And yet, you asked "Why shouldn't we develop Linux on the XBox?" When very few people are in similar situations like you, there's no motivation, that's why.
Actually, I asked "Why shouldn't we run Linux on them?"
Linux on the xbox is a hobby. I am obviously not the only one with that hobby.
This whole story is made to appear as if there's lots of people queing up to hack the XBox. Nothing can be farther from reality.
There are more people interested in running linux on the xbox than, say, there are people studying the linguistic origins of Beowulf. Five minutes with google would prove that.
Why are you so intent on discouraging people from using linux on the xbox? You remind me of David Sternlight arguing against PGP.
You are assuming: 1. Your hardware will work and/or be supported in it's present form, indefinitely by Microsoft.
Since I have not made any hardware modifications to my xbox, my warranty is intact. When that runs out, I run the same risks of non-support that I would if I used the xbox only as a console.
I am not insane; I don't expect indefinite support. Chances are good that when this hardware wears out, I will be happy to simply junk it.
2.You'd rather wait for these and better hacks to run Linux, rather than spend $200 for a Walmrt Linux box with warranty.
In my own situation, I have no real need for a Linux box. I have this xbox. Running linux on it is of equal if not better entertainment value to playing games on it.
3. A large number of people get these XBoxes as a gift.
To repeat myself, I am speaking only of my own situation. I don't have any answers for other people.
As Microsoft says often, think 3 years down. XBox may be cheap to acquire, but who supports the Linux?
In my own situation, linux is "supported" by thousands, across the globe, who publish their support. I have little need for immediate support. The little need I have has been met to date by informal IRC conversations.
Again, I have no answers for others. I would not recommend to a corporate entity that they run a mission-critical web server on an xbox!
Why should GNU coders take interest in a proprietary plaform controlled by the gorilla they love to hate?
The fact is, they do. As long as they do, I am grateful.
The OS will need lots of driver support. It's barely conceivable that you could get Windows 9x running from the dashboard hack, but it would take quite a bit of doing.
Far easier is installing linux on the thing, then using bochs or vmware to run a virtual machine in which you install Windows.
You don't need to flash the rom to use the habibi 007 exploit. You can use the savegame, plus a USB memory card, plus a USB-to-xbox cable, to run linux on your xbox whenever you like. You have to boot 007 first in order to load linux, but that's merely an annoyance.
Once you're in linux, IF you've soldered the motherboard, you can use a utility to flash the ROM. This is logically equivalent to installing a mod chip and flashing that; it just requires one less piece of hardware.
The new hack's purpose is to have linux load instead of the dashboard when the xbox starts up, thus removing 007 from the step. Logically, however, we're still using a hack as a linux bootloader; the difference being that the dashboard itself loads the hack, rather than the 007 game.
The 007 hack is one of a few possible springboards to implement the new hack; it happens to be one that does not require opening the case.
Footnote: there is actually another game besides 007 Agent Under Fire -- MechAssault -- which has a similar vulnerability. So you have a choice of 3 linux bootloaders.
The hardware is mine. There was no license governing my use of the hardware. There was, instead, a license governing the use of the software associated with that hardware.
Suppose I decided that I really, really liked using Xboxes as boat anchors. Is it your belief that such use would be against some license and that I would be technically in violation of it? Wrongo.
The best hacks for the XBox will become meaningless if MS comes out with a new design.
"Meaningless" requires some qualification. The hacks cannot become meaningless to me, because my hardware and firmware are now and will remain under my control: I own one of the first Xboxes released (I actually won it in a contest run by Taco Bell); I do not intend to ever use Xbox Live; very few games actually interest me, because my gaming skill is quite limited. Therefore in all likelihood these hacks (and improved ones based on them) will continue be operable on my hardware indefinitely.
On the other hand, even though I stand still, MS surely doesn't. New xbox models, and firmware or dashboard updates via XBL or released games, will probably render current hacks useless. Their revenue stream isn't going to dry up from direct harm; only from secondary effects like game publishers avoiding the platform. So in this sense, I agree with you.
Cracking an XBox to run Linux is like using a 500MB word-processor to write a 1 page letter. Waste of resources and effort, it profits only MS.
People do such "wasteful" things continuously - because it saves user effort. The effort expended by a machine is pretty unimportant to the user. Xbox hardware is cheap compared to similar commodity machines (for now). Why shouldn't we run linux on them?
There doesn't have to be just one "kids go to wizard school" series; indeed, Rowling is by no means the first to write such books.
Nor even the best to write such books. Although I enjoy the Harry Potter books, I enjoyed the So You Want To Be A Wizard series much more. (OK, it's not exactly a "school", more like wizard home schooling... but if it was being written today, I'd bet money that Time-Warmonger would be supressing it.)
here's only one small step from a book where Harry meets Gandalf to one where Gandalf sexually abuses Harry...
such a story would likely *not* be a commercial success, and therefore probably not attract the attention of lawyers. On the contrary, "slash" fiction - stories written by fans, about commercial characters, generally in sexual situations and offered for free consumption on the net - is extremely popular. I know for a fact there are several stories extant, involving Harry and Draco Malfoy, and one other rather funny one involving damn near everyone in the class.
Think about tan(89.99) versus tan(89.991) (which is very ill-conditioned around 90). Both numbers are not terribly truncated by floating point, but the results are different by about 1,000.
tan(89.99) and tan(89.991) are *supposed* to be different by about 1000. This is not a good example of floating point instability.
Maybe I misunderstood; maybe you were trying to say that the uncertainty in the angle is likely to be larger than 0.001 degree (or even a tenth of that), so you shouldn't be taking tan() around there anyway. If that's what you meant, sorry for this post; I agree with you.
Why is it that KVM switches have so few problems with PS2 keyboards and so many with PS2 mice?
The protocols are entirely different, and the PS/2 keyboard protocol is older, simpler, and better understood. It's been a long time since they made any substantial changes to it.
Nonetheless, few KVMs support the entire PS/2 keyboard protocol. I have tried four different KVMs, all different manufacturers, and not ONE of them can properly support the keyboard of an IBM PS/2 95 running OS/2. You type enter and get "g", type space and get "q". Crazy stuff like that. I therefore have to have a separate keyboard and mouse attached to that machine.
That is like saying that transistors solved the problem of radio transmission formats decades ago. SGML is far too flexible and powerful; I'm not even aware of any software that can render an arbitrary SGML document. (I'm sure such exists; please inform me. However, I'll bet that it is enormous and cumbersome to install and maintain.)
If you'd followed the link, you'd know that it provides not a cache of the NYT story, but a cache of the now-removed Parable Of The Lawyer And Miss Vermont, formerly on the lawyer's web page.
Even if it had been a cache of the NYT story, it would be valuable because it would provide a way to read the story without registering at the NYT.
Why do you have a flat tire in your back yard? Throw it out.
adj. 1. Constituting a very large, indefinite number; innumerable: the myriad fish in the ocean. 2. Composed of numerous diverse elements or facets: the myriad life of the metropolis.
n. 1. A vast number: the myriads of bees in the hive. 2. Archaic. Ten thousand.
Usage Note: Throughout most of its history in English myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both usages in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Myriad myriads of lives." This poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact, both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek. The Greek word mYrias, from which myriad derives, could be used as either a noun or an adjective, but the noun mYrias was used in general prose and in mathematics while the adjective mYrias was used only in poetry.
APs work best when there is good line-of-sight (or at least simple multipath sight) between the AP and the device. This can mean that a very good place to put your AP is on the ceiling. Some people don't have any electrical outlets on the ceiling.
Yes, you're buying into an unfree platform. But you're doing it with free software. I think that feels more like shafting the bastards than ignoring the platform completely would.
"You think you can kill off free software by closing your standards? I'll prove you wrong. Free software can thrive even in an unfree environment. Like money, good software drives out bad."
I'd have paid your 500 pounds in full, myself, if it would have run on my wife's Nokia phone. Those games suck.
The following is hearsay, of course. I have no transcripts, but I do know some people who could probably back me up.
The year was 1984. I was a freshman at RPI, busily ruining my life by not going to class and spending all my time in night mode on MTS, the local timesharing system. One of the most popular ways for me to waste time was by using CZSC:CB, a primitive chat room type of thing. One night I was experiencing a craving for cheese, and started babbling about it on the channels. Nobody seemed to pay attention, so I became more and more vociferous, asking people if they had any cheese, did they know anyone who had cheese in their dorm, did anyone know of an all-night supermarket where I could some cheese. Finally I started just typing CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE over and over, filling the line with CHEESE.
Some people found this funny, some people found it annoying. It was dubbed a cheeseyell. It became my trademark, over the next few months, to perform a cheeseyell or six from time to time, especially when bored.
Many of us were indeed Python freaks. Someone *may* have mentioned the relationship to the Spam sketch at the time.
After the Fall 1985 semester, I flunked out (surprised?). Around 1987, my life still a shambles, I started connecting long distance to RPI's systems. By now CB had been banned from MTS, but its heir was called CONNECT. I believe it ran on the same hardware, but you connected to it differently, and it was much less wasteful of resources. I revived the cheeseyell. I am positive that at this point the term "Spamming" was applied to it, as well as to similar repetitious, zero-content remarks. What is now referred to as "scrolling" was not an essential factor, just repetition.
Most of the waste from conventional fission plants is spent fuel and its byproducts...
Some of the first fission plants in the US are now being decomissioned. You don't just leave it sitting there for the next several centuries; you break it down and reuse the land. Tons of radioactive material besides "spent fuel and byproducts" needs to be properly contained and stored for varying periods of time, ranging from years to generations: concrete (low level), pipe and other innards (highly radioactive), contaminated soil, machinery... No power plant lasts for ever or is even meant to, and fusion plants will be no exception. And they will have plenty of similar stuff to be contained stored.
Check out this article. (Sorry, it was in last month's issue, so the whole article isn't available.)
If there are human simulations, and we do not have them, it's entirely possible someone else in this non-simulated universe has them. (Fermi paradox set aside for the moment.)
We have an aging Intervoice IVR system running on an original IBM PS/2 model 95 - still running OS/2. (Extremely stable, I might add; the only reason we upgraded from OS/2 2.1 to OS/2 Warp 3 was because of Y2K. Less than an hour downtime in the last six months. On hardware from the early 90s.) Not only are the telephone line cards inside it MCA, therefore OS/2 specific; there is an expansion box that supports additional line cards, connected to the PS/2 by an MCA card.
(Okay, you can probably run Linux or BSD on a PS/2. But I seriously doubt you can find drivers for these cards.)
Forms were already present. Of course the controls you could put on a form were limited: no clickable images. No client-side image maps either - I remember the huzzah when they first appeared (in Netscape 1.1N IIRC).
Running any remote desktop from a client to a windows server requires one user license per active session. If 50 people need to use the app at the same time, you need 50 licenses.
Those licenses are not available for Windows 9x, but you could probaly purchase Windows 2000/XP terminal access licenses and not be considered in violation.
It does not matter where the processing is being done -- a user is a user.
WRONG.
MS Windows 2000 Terminal Server's license explicitly makes it clear that each device connecting to a Terminal Server needs its own Client Access License. Licenses are not "per active user"; they are "per active machine", where "active" means "is being used by this company" -- this month, this year, whatever. You are only allowed to reclaim and reassign licenses when a device goes out of service permanently.
Similar remarks apply at least in spirit to every single one of MS's current products. MS rejected the "per connection" license model years ago and has firmly refused to entertain returning to it.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet, you asked "Why shouldn't we develop Linux on the XBox?" When very few people are in similar situations like you, there's no motivation, that's why. Actually, I asked "Why shouldn't we run Linux on them?" Linux on the xbox is a hobby. I am obviously not the only one with that hobby. This whole story is made to appear as if there's lots of people queing up to hack the XBox. Nothing can be farther from reality. There are more people interested in running linux on the xbox than, say, there are people studying the linguistic origins of Beowulf. Five minutes with google would prove that. Why are you so intent on discouraging people from using linux on the xbox? You remind me of David Sternlight arguing against PGP.
You are assuming:
1. Your hardware will work and/or be supported in it's present form, indefinitely by Microsoft.
Since I have not made any hardware modifications to my xbox, my warranty is intact. When that runs out, I run the same risks of non-support that I would if I used the xbox only as a console.
I am not insane; I don't expect indefinite support. Chances are good that when this hardware wears out, I will be happy to simply junk it.
2.You'd rather wait for these and better hacks to run Linux, rather than spend $200 for a Walmrt Linux box with warranty.
In my own situation, I have no real need for a Linux box. I have this xbox. Running linux on it is of equal if not better entertainment value to playing games on it.
3. A large number of people get these XBoxes as a gift.
To repeat myself, I am speaking only of my own situation. I don't have any answers for other people.
As Microsoft says often, think 3 years down. XBox may be cheap to acquire, but who supports the Linux?
In my own situation, linux is "supported" by thousands, across the globe, who publish their support. I have little need for immediate support. The little need I have has been met to date by informal IRC conversations.
Again, I have no answers for others. I would not recommend to a corporate entity that they run a mission-critical web server on an xbox!
Why should GNU coders take interest in a proprietary plaform controlled by the gorilla they love to hate?
The fact is, they do. As long as they do, I am grateful.
The OS will need lots of driver support. It's barely conceivable that you could get Windows 9x running from the dashboard hack, but it would take quite a bit of doing.
Far easier is installing linux on the thing, then using bochs or vmware to run a virtual machine in which you install Windows.
That was the guy's handle.
The hardware is mine . There was no license governing my use of the hardware. There was, instead, a license governing the use of the software associated with that hardware.
Suppose I decided that I really, really liked using Xboxes as boat anchors. Is it your belief that such use would be against some license and that I would be technically in violation of it? Wrongo.
"Meaningless" requires some qualification. The hacks cannot become meaningless to me, because my hardware and firmware are now and will remain under my control: I own one of the first Xboxes released (I actually won it in a contest run by Taco Bell); I do not intend to ever use Xbox Live; very few games actually interest me, because my gaming skill is quite limited. Therefore in all likelihood these hacks (and improved ones based on them) will continue be operable on my hardware indefinitely.
On the other hand, even though I stand still, MS surely doesn't. New xbox models, and firmware or dashboard updates via XBL or released games, will probably render current hacks useless. Their revenue stream isn't going to dry up from direct harm; only from secondary effects like game publishers avoiding the platform. So in this sense, I agree with you.
People do such "wasteful" things continuously - because it saves user effort. The effort expended by a machine is pretty unimportant to the user. Xbox hardware is cheap compared to similar commodity machines (for now). Why shouldn't we run linux on them?
There doesn't have to be just one "kids go to wizard school" series; indeed, Rowling is by no means the first to write such books.
... but if it was being written today, I'd bet money that Time-Warmonger would be supressing it.)
Nor even the best to write such books. Although I enjoy the Harry Potter books, I enjoyed the So You Want To Be A Wizard series much more. (OK, it's not exactly a "school", more like wizard home schooling
So is much of what I read on Slashdot.
here's only one small step from a book where Harry meets Gandalf to one where Gandalf sexually abuses Harry... such a story would likely *not* be a commercial success, and therefore probably not attract the attention of lawyers. On the contrary, "slash" fiction - stories written by fans, about commercial characters, generally in sexual situations and offered for free consumption on the net - is extremely popular. I know for a fact there are several stories extant, involving Harry and Draco Malfoy, and one other rather funny one involving damn near everyone in the class.
tan(89.99) and tan(89.991) are *supposed* to be different by about 1000. This is not a good example of floating point instability.
Maybe I misunderstood; maybe you were trying to say that the uncertainty in the angle is likely to be larger than 0.001 degree (or even a tenth of that), so you shouldn't be taking tan() around there anyway. If that's what you meant, sorry for this post; I agree with you.
Nonetheless, few KVMs support the entire PS/2 keyboard protocol. I have tried four different KVMs, all different manufacturers, and not ONE of them can properly support the keyboard of an IBM PS/2 95 running OS/2. You type enter and get "g", type space and get "q". Crazy stuff like that. I therefore have to have a separate keyboard and mouse attached to that machine.
I thought SGML solved this problem years ago..
That is like saying that transistors solved the problem of radio transmission formats decades ago. SGML is far too flexible and powerful; I'm not even aware of any software that can render an arbitrary SGML document. (I'm sure such exists; please inform me. However, I'll bet that it is enormous and cumbersome to install and maintain.)
Entry for Myriad:
adj.
1. Constituting a very large, indefinite number; innumerable: the myriad fish in the ocean.
2. Composed of numerous diverse elements or facets: the myriad life of the metropolis.
n.
1. A vast number: the myriads of bees in the hive.
2. Archaic. Ten thousand.
Usage Note: Throughout most of its history in English myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both usages in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Myriad myriads of lives." This poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact, both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek. The Greek word mYrias, from which myriad derives, could be used as either a noun or an adjective, but the noun mYrias was used in general prose and in mathematics while the adjective mYrias was used only in poetry.
APs work best when there is good line-of-sight (or at least simple multipath sight) between the AP and the device. This can mean that a very good place to put your AP is on the ceiling. Some people don't have any electrical outlets on the ceiling.
Yes, you're buying into an unfree platform. But you're doing it with free software. I think that feels more like shafting the bastards than ignoring the platform completely would.
"You think you can kill off free software by closing your standards? I'll prove you wrong. Free software can thrive even in an unfree environment. Like money, good software drives out bad."
I'd have paid your 500 pounds in full, myself, if it would have run on my wife's Nokia phone. Those games suck.
The following is hearsay, of course. I have no transcripts, but I do know some people who could probably back me up.
The year was 1984. I was a freshman at RPI, busily ruining my life by not going to class and spending all my time in night mode on MTS, the local timesharing system. One of the most popular ways for me to waste time was by using CZSC:CB, a primitive chat room type of thing. One night I was experiencing a craving for cheese, and started babbling about it on the channels. Nobody seemed to pay attention, so I became more and more vociferous, asking people if they had any cheese, did they know anyone who had cheese in their dorm, did anyone know of an all-night supermarket where I could some cheese. Finally I started just typing CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE over and over, filling the line with CHEESE.
Some people found this funny, some people found it annoying. It was dubbed a cheeseyell. It became my trademark, over the next few months, to perform a cheeseyell or six from time to time, especially when bored.
Many of us were indeed Python freaks. Someone *may* have mentioned the relationship to the Spam sketch at the time.
After the Fall 1985 semester, I flunked out (surprised?). Around 1987, my life still a shambles, I started connecting long distance to RPI's systems. By now CB had been banned from MTS, but its heir was called CONNECT. I believe it ran on the same hardware, but you connected to it differently, and it was much less wasteful of resources. I revived the cheeseyell. I am positive that at this point the term "Spamming" was applied to it, as well as to similar repetitious, zero-content remarks. What is now referred to as "scrolling" was not an essential factor, just repetition.
Most of the waste from conventional fission plants is spent fuel and its byproducts ...
... No power plant lasts for ever or is even meant to, and fusion plants will be no exception. And they will have plenty of similar stuff to be contained stored.
Some of the first fission plants in the US are now being decomissioned. You don't just leave it sitting there for the next several centuries; you break it down and reuse the land. Tons of radioactive material besides "spent fuel and byproducts" needs to be properly contained and stored for varying periods of time, ranging from years to generations: concrete (low level), pipe and other innards (highly radioactive), contaminated soil, machinery
Check out this article. (Sorry, it was in last month's issue, so the whole article isn't available.)
If there are human simulations, and we do not have them, it's entirely possible someone else in this non-simulated universe has them. (Fermi paradox set aside for the moment.)
Neither does command.com. Anybody still using it?
I guess you know why now.
(Okay, you can probably run Linux or BSD on a PS/2. But I seriously doubt you can find drivers for these cards.)
Forms were already present. Of course the controls you could put on a form were limited: no clickable images. No client-side image maps either - I remember the huzzah when they first appeared (in Netscape 1.1N IIRC).
WRONG.
MS Windows 2000 Terminal Server's license explicitly makes it clear that each device connecting to a Terminal Server needs its own Client Access License. Licenses are not "per active user"; they are "per active machine", where "active" means "is being used by this company" -- this month, this year, whatever. You are only allowed to reclaim and reassign licenses when a device goes out of service permanently.
Similar remarks apply at least in spirit to every single one of MS's current products. MS rejected the "per connection" license model years ago and has firmly refused to entertain returning to it.
You Lose.