Microsoft to Hire Xbox Hackers? 360
handsomepete writes "According to PlanetXbox, Microsoft is looking to hire 'software design engineers' to look into the properties of modchips and detection code for hardware. A background in game hacking knowledge is listed as a preferred talent. Will any of the Xbox Linux participants take a stab at this job?"
I would assume (Score:4, Interesting)
We all knew this was going to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's just hope sellout hackers aren't as good as not-for-profit hackers.
Re:We all knew this was going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
At the very least, I would be amazed if Palladium development did not carefully scrutinize successes and failures of the X-Box model.
Re:yeah right (Score:1, Interesting)
Depends on where you went to school (Score:3, Interesting)
I distinctly remember taking a Linux kernel hacking class [gatech.edu] when I was in college which amongst other things included hacking Linux on the iPaq. I also seem to remember that one of my group members was in a video game class at the same time which included projects such as hack Quake I [gatech.edu].
Unnamed Patron (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing your forgetting here... (Score:2, Interesting)
This is doubly so if you live in Oregon, Washington or California - where unemployment is still 1st, 2nd and 3rd highest in the nation respectively.
I mean its either that or going to work for stream international
Open Letter to Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
I am fully qualified for the position you have listed. In fact, I may be one of the most qualified applicants around. I have been hacking copy protect mechanisms since I was 7. I have something to tell you. You have heard this before from people just like me, but you have not listened.
You do not seem to realize that what you are doing, in your attempts to introduce completely 'trusted' computers, is evil. I'm not referring to your usual misguided 'save the world by taking it over' style of evil, I'm talking more of a killing kittens for fun kind of evil. You are, whether it is your intention or not, going to remove general purpose computing from the hands of the non-experts, and they won't know enough to stop you. Depending on your success I forsee one of two final results. The likeliest option is that you go out of business in 80 years, because your 'innovations' stunt the technological development of an entire generation and alienate those few who are intelligent enough to have become programmers anyways. In this case, you will set back humanity's development by hundreds of years. Or, alternately, you drive your existing user base to other platforms and go out of business in 5 years. I doubt you will allow the second option to happen.
I have not participated in the efforts to hack your hardware (XBox) previously because I did not want to support you by purchasing one. Now, I see the light. I, with the help of other slashdotters, have realized that the XBox is just a test run of your trusted computing initiatives. It is a chance for you to find the bugs in your system and fix them on a platform which attracts hackers, yet presents no serious loss when it is hacked. I have no doubt in my mind that if you manage to perfect this architecture you will waste no time in implementing it in desktop PCs and using your monopoly power to force a significant number of users over to it.
Therefore, this is my notice to you. I will not let you succeed. I am qualified for your position, but I will not be applying. I will be adding my intelligence to the effort to stop you, and I will succeed. And if I do not, it does not matter. Because I am not alone. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all. [hackers.com] And, in the end, you will lose. I promise.
-JM
101010
(Posted anonymously because Microsoft's lawyers are more expensive than mine.)
At least they didn't sue (Score:3, Interesting)
Do what I did. (Score:4, Interesting)
I still got the job. I doubt M$ would accept that.
Try signing John Doe to those documents, see if anyone notices.
Re:BS Required (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course you might learn all of this outside of school... but the same people who sneer at school tend to sneer at this level of understanding and also seem to think that computer science == programming. Requiring a degree is one step towards weeding those folks out. (Remember that weeding a person out is not free from a business perspective, so it literally pays to have such easy criteria to filter on.) It also demonstrates a certain minimal facility with working with this sort of rigor, which is one of the greatest glaring weaknesses in the most self-taught computer scientists^W programmers.
Given the background necessary to really do a good job, I'm kinda surprised they aren't requiring a Masters or PhD in related speciality. Perhaps that would narrow the market too much.
Re:no thanks. (Score:3, Interesting)
Same applies to most other examples. Keep in mind that there's no single universal moral code, nor are moral codes absolute.
Of course there is the difference between survival (starving vs. working for evil masters), and simpler priorization between "right" and "convenient"... but I felt poster tried to make the point of at least considering why people do the things that are against their ideals, not to claim everyone always does what they thought is the right to do, no matter what.
Software Hippocratic Oath (Score:3, Interesting)
Brian Hook of id Software said it best... (Score:5, Interesting)
"This is my view of the people who work at Microsoft: You have a choice. You have to realize that what you're doing is bad for the industry. If you're doing stuff that you don't even agree with and do it for the money- we have a word for that: Whore."
Re:Call me crazy, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think they see it as some distance away from the center of gravity of their customer base, which is mostly pimply -> wrinkly twitchers. Plus they probably rightly see that actually very few of their customers overall will ever get a modchip that is necessary to run it.. 1%-5% something like that.
However the other week Michael Steil, the project lead had Open Office up. That really made me think, with a little more maturity and slickness, quickly and easily booting into being able to run Mozilla, Mplayer, Office apps, all from a free CD and a $10 USB keyboard could potentially give MS nightmares from several angles. What's needed now is a) to still work with the new 'secure' version that's in the pipeline, and b) preferably some way to get control of the machine without a modchip.
On the job offer, most of the folks working on the project are in the EU, and several (although not necessarily all) do not find themselves philisophically aligned with the aims of MS. But if anyone wants to join them, I'd wish them good luck against the modchip manufacturers, they'll need it. I think that kind of job could be interesting, but if they day dawns that you 'win', the excitement fades, the scales fall from your eyes and you look around at the smoking ruins you have caused.
Re:is it just me or .. (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Ever heard of a mirror? RedHat maybe makes it hard to download from their site because there are hundreds of mirrors around the world. Besides, who wants to download from a site that might be around the globe from you when there is more than likely a mirror a few hops away? (Yes there are financial reasons too. All that bandwidth used up by people downloading directly from RedHat isnt free.) Oh yeah, it exists at the same relative location on all mirrors, so ftp://ftp.whatever.com/pub/redhat/linux/current will always point to the latest release of the distro. (Yes this includes ftp.redhat.com) It really _isnt_ that hard to find!
2) I guarantee that I could install 100 machines with RedHat faster than you could install 100 machines with WinXP, Win2k, Win98, WinME, Win95 or any friggen Win* you care to mention. A floppy Kickstart install with DHCP assigned addresses. Hell I could make every machine a different configuration and still get them done quicker than 100 identical Windows builds. (DHCP to assign different
Total cost for RedHat solution - the floppy disks used.
Total cost for MS solution - 100 x cost of WinXP/2000 + 100 CALs for the server they will likely connect to +
(Disclaimer - I am a contractor who supports both Windows and Linux on server and desktops. I have several clients with RedHat on the desktop (admittedly a somewhat customised distro) and many with Windows. Right at the moment, I am kept in a job as a result of the Windows clients constant problems and adminstration required. The RedHat sites are pretty much set and forget, with the occasional re-KickStarting (which takes 15 minutes from go to whoa) Needless to say, for my livelihood, I suggest everyone runs Windows (But fuck i hate working on them!))
Re:We all knew this was going to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
IT'S A GAMES BOX for crying out loud.
Operating systems: Microsoft releases one every year or two. We'll say 1.5. Say people upgrade every other time (w-95 to w-Me, w-2000-w-XP), so that's one OS, bought for $150, every 3 years.
Video Game systems: Even on an off year, there are 100 titles. Chances are people will buy 6 or 8 in a year. At $50/pop, that's a lot of lost revenue they've lost in royalties over 3 years, a lot more than say operating system attrition. If people pirate games, they stand to lose more than from Operating Systems, and I'll tell you why:
A couple of key points that I've pointed out before. One: MICROSOFT does NOT CARE about individual piracy of windows. That's a fact. They care about idiots pirating it, and they care about coroprations pirating 4000 copies of it. They DO NOT CARE about the average slashdot reader pirating windows, for this reason: We are their free tech support. I pirate windows (sue me), and my dad asks me questions about how to work his computer, quote unquote. I would swear, being the "computer guru" has paid off for Microsoft more so than me, they've gotten their $200 worth out of me, in the way of I've prevented people with problems from contacting Microsoft. I have SAVED THEM MONEY, and therefore it is in their best interest to get windows, latest versions, into my hands as quickly as possible, and for free, so that I know it intimately.
Now, in the realm of games, they stand to lose money. The X-box is essentially an attempt to get into the game industry, specifically for the reasons outlined above: more people buy more video games than operating systems. More money is the bottom line to the X-box. Of course, they spent a god-damn fortune launching the thing with less than stellar titles, and competing with the PS-2's already entrenched lead and the backwards compatability of ps2-psx has proved hard. They can't stand to lose more money.
And speaking of the PS2: Sony, on the other hand, doesn't care if people pirate games for their systems. Why? They make money on the hardware. To play pirated playstation games, you first have to have a playstation. Any rumor that Sony lost money on the playstation or ps2 hardware is bull. They make the thing, and they make money on it.
Now, there once was going to be a Mod-Chip for the PS-2 that was going to eliminate the need for ANY knife trick, ANY boot disk, ANY game shark, etc etc, at the price of having 58 solder points. It was called the Messiah. There are several out there floating around as the Messiah chip, but to my knowledge, none of them actually are the origional planned chip. Sony shut the messiah chip down. Why? Why this one and not any of the others? Why not get the people that made the USB mod chip that needed the game shark?
Because in order for the messiah chip to work, the programmers had to disable ALL security checks, including reagion coding for DVD's, and other DVD anti-piracy measures. Sony had too high a stake in movies, which they stood to lose quite a bit more, enough to shut the Messiah down.
So, to sum up: Microsoft cares about X-Box game piracy, not OS piracy. Sony cares about movie piracy, not Game piracy. In short, it's all about the Benjamins.
~Will
Re:Brian Hook of id Software said it best... (Score:1, Interesting)
"Usually, you're either a whore or a slut - either you're charging for it or you're giving it away. You might as well get paid."
Re:We all knew this was going to happen (Score:4, Interesting)
With sony, I think that they take a much smaller chunk of royalty for PS and PS2 games than Microsoft takes for X-box games. But, also, sony has a much higher stake in movies than in games. The same people that buy an operating system every 3 years, and a game every other month, will buy 2 or 3 DVD's per month.
I'm not saying they don't care about the money. I'm just saying they have their priorities in order. Sony seems to be a well run company, on the track to make good profit for quite a while, and in the meantime, still produce a good product.
Plus, when you sell as many copies of games as sony does, you can afford a little attrition: How many Tekken Tags or Final Fantasy X's or GTA 3's were sold? It's a lot, I can tell you that, more than X-Box games.
And also, I hate the X-box. Because of the reason microsoft got into the market: only to cash in, not to make quality games. Because of the lack of good games for it. Because of the controllers.
~Will
~Will
Copy protection is fruitless. (Score:3, Interesting)
Pirating has helped some companies in gaining market and mindshare. Sony and Playstation come to mind as does Commodore 64, amiga and the PC. They wouldnt have left the ground if it hadnt been so darn easy to copy the games and apps.Imagine buying all applications on a normal PC without linux?
Should the PS1 have been as successful if it hadnt been modchipped and games pirated? I dont think so and the same goes for the PC. Install a working copy protection and your user base flies off to another platform instead.
Re:We all knew this was going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a nitpick, but XBox isn't Windows CE. It's based on a stripped down Windows 2000 kernel. Perhaps you're thinking of the Dreamcast, which did support CE? (few games actually used CE, but it was an option). Anyway, your port argument will only be valid for the first generation or two of XBox games. Since the XBox is static hardware (ie, it's a console, regardless of what Slashbots say about it), most developers will write their own in-house libraries that are thin layers over the hardware itself, rather than using something bulkier like DirectX. Once they do this, PC-to-XBox ports will no longer be trivial, and vice versa.
Odd you say XBox has a "lack of good games", considering it had the strongest launch line-up of any console since I don't know when (definitely not the PS2 or Gamecube, PSX, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64, or even the Genesis and SNES). And before you ding me for still talking about the launch line-up, let me state that the XBox isn't even a year old yet. It's still completely valid to consider those games. I'll grant you that many of the games that came later haven't been that great, but there have been quite a few good ones (Rallisport Challenge, Jet Set Radio Future, Gunvalkyrie (hard, but fun), Crazy Taxi 3, etc). As well, more good games are being released right now, like Turok (last month), Sega GT 2002, Soccer Slam (ported from GameCube, but with extra features and supposedly better graphics and sound), Dead to Rights, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (laugh if you will, but it's supposedly a rather good action game), with quite a few more to come soon like Shenmue II, Quantum Redshift, Blinx, Panzer Dragoon Orta, and more. Maybe none of those are your thing (ie, if you're loyal to certain game lines like Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Tekken, or Gran Turismo), and that's cool. However, just because the XBox doesn't have those certain franchises doesn't mean it has a lack of good games (and no, I'm not putting words in your mouth. I'm just suggesting a possible reason for why you may be overlooking some good games).
As for the controller issue, try again [xbox.com]. Personally, I like the larger original controller (it just "fits right" in my hands), as do a number of my friends, but I've got one friend that swears by the smaller S controller. Both are good, high-quality, durable controllers. Neither will give you "game cramps" that you get with Sony's controllers (or, I get that, anyway).