[KLUG Advocacy] Re: [KLUG Members] Tales of the hacked X-Box: Linux on MS hardware....

[Adam Williams]

> ... and it makes the New York Times, too!
>    http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/10/technology/circuits/10xbox.html?hp

"Technology industry executives, however, often call such activity a
bald attempt to hijack the Xbox illegally."

Has anyone ever heard and 'industry executive' not employed by M$ say
any such thing?  And no, representatives of the DMCA, etc... and other
nefarious abuse-the-courts legal groups are not "Technology industry
executives", they're just lawyers.

IANAL... but...
"hacked BIOS generally incorporates modified versions of copyrighted
Microsoft code and so is generally illegal."

Is this really true?  Seems sketchy.  If it is then mounting a windows
parition under Linux and "dd if=/dev/randmom of=/mnt/c/windows/win.com
skip=1024 count=1024 bs=1" is illegal (Hey, I changed to contents of a
binary derived from copyrighted code).  I have my doubts if IP law
includes that.  Not that they haven't tossed some people in jail for the
equivalent.

"In 2001, Sony sued an Australian for selling modchips that allowed
Australian PlayStation 2 units to play games from other parts of the
world. After the Australian government argued on the man's behalf,
however, the Federal Court of Australia last July ruled mostly against
Sony."

So should a geek consider emmigrating to Australia?  It is warmer than
Finland.

"ared: "In very simple words: The Xbox is cheaper than a PC. The Xbox is
a lot smaller than a PC. The Xbox looks better (next to a TV set). The
Xbox is more silent. Therefore it's an ideal Linux computer in the
living room.""

The x-box has only 64Mb of RAM.  Again, why sould someone want to use
one of these as a PC?  I have *ROUTERS* with more RAM than that.