XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet) [LWN.net]

ZDNet's David Berlind examines some of the obstacles put into Microsoft's XBox 360 game platform to thwart reverse engineering efforts. "According to Engadget, the Free60 project has developed a list of barriers to hacking Linux onto Microsoft's XBox 360s that reads like an art thief's list of obstacles to stealing the Mona Lisa. At first glance, a story about how the XBox could be hackproof may appear to you to be irrelevant if you're reading this blog (Between the Lines, "The blog for discriminating IT buyers"). But when I read the list, I noticed how reminiscent the architecture is of the PC of the future".

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XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet)

Posted Nov 29, 2005 18:11 UTC (Tue) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link]

Locked down PC's will open a market for DRM free computers
made somewhere in emergent countries...

XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet)

Posted Nov 29, 2005 19:15 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

That will then be illegal to import into various countries for some reason that will be made up later.

XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet)

Posted Nov 29, 2005 23:25 UTC (Tue) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link]

Could it not be argued then that DRM-free PCs are copyright-infringement devices and therefore are illegal under the DMCA?

XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet)

Posted Nov 30, 2005 9:46 UTC (Wed) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link]

Sure.

But besides the US there are ~200 countries, many of them are
not encumbered by large corporate lobbies and some of them
might find economic advantage to foster personal freedoms.
The point is that the technology to make simple normal
computers will be more and more accessible to third world
countries, particularly with the availablility of open
source software.

XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet)

Posted Nov 30, 2005 13:50 UTC (Wed) by AAP (guest, #721) [Link]

But, will full-featured (non-DRM) computers be available in certain "first-world" countries? Since many of us live in such a country, that's a relevant question.

XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet)

Posted Nov 29, 2005 19:21 UTC (Tue) by rcbixler (guest, #11917) [Link]

This seems like the classic "bait and switch." Now that PCs are so
common due to the rich variety of software which runs on it, which is in
no small part due to the openness of the PC platform, Microsoft figures
that they can close up the platform and reap all of the profits for
themselves. It's the end of a logical progression. Even back in the
early days of the '80's and '90's, Microsoft could be heard making
remarks like "we want our 'fair share' of the market, which is 100%."

XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet)

Posted Nov 29, 2005 20:11 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Yup. This is beginning of the end... the end of Microsoft I mean. IBM also wanted 100% back when PS/2 was invented. In the end they got 0% - even if it took many years... I sure hope Microsoft will repeat this achievment...

XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet)

Posted Nov 29, 2005 20:25 UTC (Tue) by kmself (guest, #11565) [Link]

I can only repeat Jason Spence's comments, on Palladium aka NGCSB aka "Trusted Computing" posted to the linux-elitists list:

The black hat community is drooling over the possibility of a secure execution environment that would allow applications to run in a secure area which cannot be attached to via debuggers.

XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet)

Posted Nov 30, 2005 7:13 UTC (Wed) by Mithrandir (subscriber, #3031) [Link]

Heh, I've never looked at it that way before... quite funny :)

XBox 360: A harbinger of the PC lockdown to come? (ZDNet)

Posted Nov 30, 2005 5:03 UTC (Wed) by sitaram (subscriber, #5959) [Link]

If this is true, I'd say it's darned nice of them to give the hackers time to practice on the Xbox well in advance of the real deal :-)