On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, at 10:37 AM, Eric Cordian wrote:
It is said that Microsoft loses money on every one sold, and the box wouldGiven that x86 boxes without Windows installed can now be had for about the price of an XBox, and given that the graphics chip in the Xbox is not used by any of the Linux server uses (so far as I know), the main value of hacking the Xbox is for cuteness, to show that it can be done.
certainly make a lovely Linux box or Web Server providing you could run
something other than Microsoft-signed binaries on it.
(The approximately $200-300 Linux box comes with a 600 MHz VIA x86, and may come with more than the 10 GB disk the Xbox comes from. I don't track this closely. I'd expect that the drive is faster in the PC, as XBox doesn't need a speedy drive for game play. All in all, I'd rather have the PC for Linux than a hacked Xbox.)
Ignoring for the moment that The Neo Project had zero chance of factoring
a 2048 bit key using publicly available algorithms, their caving under
imagined legal pressure strikes me as a really bad precedent.
Given zero chance of success and finite risk, the payoff is obvious.
You can, of course, start your own such factoring effort.
Those who don't wish to use MS products should not do so. I use Macs. Many use Linux. And so on.
Microsoft, an illegal monopoly in the area of computer operating systems,
is attempting to garner a share of the gaming market.
Microsoft is not using force to coerce anyone into either buying machines with Windows installed or to use Windows or Office or anything else.
(And if you wish to complain about market share being the only determinant of what a monopoly is, Intel's dominance of the microprocessor market is even more compelling. But, again, no liberty-supporting person can support a claim that people's uncoerced choices make a company an illegal actor.)
--Tim May
