Hacker cracks Xbox challenge (News.com) [LWN.net]

Hacker cracks Xbox challenge (News.com)

Posted Apr 1, 2003 13:57 UTC (Tue) by beejaybee (guest, #1581)
In reply to: Hacker cracks Xbox challenge (News.com) by foobar
Parent article: Hacker cracks Xbox challenge (News.com)

"In Europe, Microsoft retail price is less than 200E. For the price of a PC motherboard I could have a powerful Linux box."

Sorry, you don't get my point. 200E will buy you a second-user system box with more power than Xbox, and without the hardware tieups. (Look at eBay if you don't believe me.) In fact these days you could build a system box from _new_ parts purchased retail with similar power to the 700 MHz Pentium III embedded in Xbox for round about that price - so long as you don't need leading-edge graphics.

It may be true that M$ loses money by subsidising Xbox hardware, but somehow I don't think we can bankrupt M$ by all rushing out & buying up Xbox systems.

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True Significance

Posted Apr 1, 2003 16:48 UTC (Tue) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]

The true significance of this event (besides hack value for the participants) is that all those Xboxes received as gifts can be turned into real computers. Useless hardware has been turned into useful hardware. Captive hardware has been freed.

There would never be any point in buying an Xbox to run Linux on. Rather, when there's already an Xbox lying around, now it has potential as a Free Software engine.

"Never seen Linux? I'll show you what it looks like. Here, let's just plug this into your Xbox, and you'll see!"

Or, "You don't have a computer? Never mind, look, you have an Xbox. We'll just plug this in and go."

Or, "I wish I could afford to get a computer. All I have is this dumb Xbox. Maybe I can make something out of it?"