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Author Topic: Xbox Engineers Vs. Xbox Hackers  (Read 19 times)

michaeljohnson

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Xbox Engineers Vs. Xbox Hackers
« on: June 19, 2007, 10:51:00 PM »
I think I got a good question, please read carefully before you put a reply. I want to know how this hacking stuff looks like to the the engineers of the Xbox. For example, I want to know if they are surprised of the xbox's potential or  if it's not a surprise at all. If the engineers were to hack the system, would it be easy, or have hackers found discoveries that the engineers did not know about.
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--DANNY--

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Xbox Engineers Vs. Xbox Hackers
« Reply #1 on: June 20, 2007, 03:47:00 AM »
Well I definitely don't think that any developer ever thought that the Xbox would be capable of running, or even had the vision for, a program such as XboxMediaCenter.
Because Microsoft's Xbox Music Mixer game/program seriously sucks.

So I think that the coders/hackers of the Xbox have really put the Xbox to a lot more use than would have been thought by Microsoft and game developers starting out.

As far as the engineers hacking the system... well... they wouldn't have to... it's legal for them to use their purchased Xbox Development Kit to program whatever, and I don't think they'd ever really want to or need to change anything such as the bios.

But being that the Xbox is basically an IBM PC with a 0.733 Ghz Processor with an NVidia GPU, it's blatantly obvious that it is capable of a lot. I guess the imagination is kinda the limit with what it's capable of... well as long as the imagination stays within the capabilities of the aforementioned specs.

That's my 2 cents anyways...
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twistedsymphony

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Xbox Engineers Vs. Xbox Hackers
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2007, 06:21:00 AM »
I would suspect that all of the engineers are suprised by all of the hacks found. They designed the console to be hack proof so if they did know of a way to hack it, they would have fixed it before it was released.

As for being surprised by what was done with XBMC, I think they were probably surprised that a homebrew app came out that was so refined and feature filled by I don't think it's capabilities were all that surprising considering the hardware was just a PC... XBMC is really a fairly simple program in the grand scheme of things... sure it's far more useful then any other Xbox app but in terms of complexity it's quite simple when compared to even a mediocre game.
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coldasice

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Xbox Engineers Vs. Xbox Hackers
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2007, 10:21:00 AM »
I think it doesn't supprise them at all. Twistedsymphony said they dont have to hack the systems because they have dev kits, and basically it is a computer. I do think though that there are is a limit to what those guys will do to make it secure. Most engineers are on a salary instead of a hour rate. This means if they work a hard to try and fix those security holes they still don't see an extra penny. I was also wondering if they may have taken the idea of XBMC and put it on the dash for the 360. The whole concept of using the 360 not just as a gaming system but as a media center. Then again when you pay 400 dollars for a console it better do more than play games.
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