The price some people pay... (xbox 360)

[Shannon]

The price some people pay...

 

Microsofts firmware update creates problems.

 

I bet those people were freaking out.

[Lord Helmet]

I actually really happy about this dashboard update, since it allows video streaming from meada player. My PC runs Media Center 2004, which is the version of Win XP that won't work properly with media connect and the 360. Up until now I could only share music and pictures. Now video works as well

[Shannon]

That nice to know. I have a media center pc, although I do not remember having any difficulties. But the price I was referring to is some DVD modders were getting failures because of this update.

[Gabriel]

That article has a pretty healthy attitude about it. If you hack your X360 firmware, then you deserve what you get. If your system becomes a big white brick, then sucks to be you.

 

So, I really have to wonder why it is that people have the complete reverse attitude when it comes to the PSP.

[Flojomojo]

That's the main XBOX cracking site. M$ has always said that if you mess with unauthorized software, you could be banned from their service -- or in this case, your box stops working and it's your own fault.

 

If their pushed updates harmed a stock system, M$ should pay to fix it, but it doesn't sound like that's the problem discussed.

 

Personally, I look forward to having all my XBLA games load into a list instantly, the way it should be. That's all I care about in this upgrade. Hopefully they'll enable streaming of divx and avi movies soon, though ...

[JB]

That article has a pretty healthy attitude about it. If you hack your X360 firmware, then you deserve what you get. If your system becomes a big white brick, then sucks to be you.

I wouldn't say deserve, but if you're hacking it, you have to accept that it may not work as intended, or at all. And that a hack that seems to work all right might not work right later.

So yeah, sucks to be you.

 

If MS was actively targetting the modder community, it'd be a diffrent story.

You shouldn't intentionally break someone's toys just because they're not using them like you said to.

[Shannon]

Yeah I just found it an interesting unintended (from the looks of it) result of hacked DVD drives. Just goes to show that if you play with fire... I'm personally not interested until someone figures out homebrew.

 

The PSP is almost (but not quite) as dangerous. On the PSP though you just get weird issues like certain games not working, etc. But I've seen tons of times where people bricked their PSP.

[Lord Helmet]

That nice to know. I have a media center pc, although I do not remember having any difficulties. But the price I was referring to is some DVD modders were getting failures because of this update.

 

Media center 2005 works fine...just not 2004 Now my problems are solved!

Edited November 1, 2006 by Lord Helmet

[spacecadet]

I wouldn't say deserve, but if you're hacking it, you have to accept that it may not work as intended, or at all. And that a hack that seems to work all right might not work right later.

So yeah, sucks to be you.

 

It's different with these new firmware updates, though, because they're basically forced upon you. I don't even know how MS is pushing 360 updates, but from what I understand it's downloaded automatically when you sign in to Xbox Live. I don't know what happens if you don't have a net connection - does MS put firmware updates on game discs like Sony does with the PSP?

 

I think the bottom line is it's your hardware and you should be able to do with it what you want. That includes not having to accept firmware updates (which modify the software *on* your hardware), whether to play a game or for any other reason.

 

I agree that people shouldn't then expect to be able to continue using Xbox Live to play games with other people that do have the updates. But your own hardware is your own hardware. If you just want to modify your account settings on Live, which has no bearing on playing anything and which you in fact *paid* for, you shouldn't have a firmware update forced on you. At worst, you should always have the choice on whether or not to accept an update, but the consequences for saying no shouldn't extend further than locking you out of online play.

[Gabriel]

 

 

It's different with these new firmware updates, though, because they're basically forced upon you. I don't even know how MS is pushing 360 updates, but from what I understand it's downloaded automatically when you sign in to Xbox Live. I don't know what happens if you don't have a net connection - does MS put firmware updates on game discs like Sony does with the PSP?

 

 

With the 360, you are prompted to update whenever you sign on to Live. If you choose not to update, you are signed out of Live and cannot sign back in unless you update.

 

If you don't have the 360 connected to the internet, you'll eventually come across a disc which requires the update to run. You'll be prompted to update your firmware. If you refuse, the game won't play. I believe it even ejects the disc.

 

The PSP is more or less the same. You can download the updates off the web and transfer them to your PSP, or the update will be on a game disc. When a game requires an update to run, you cannot play the game until you have installed the new firmware.

[PressureCooker2600]

lol...stupid 360 shit...my nintendos and ataris never had all these fuckin problems and glitches and slowdowns and everything.....serves this new gen of gamers right lol lol

[moycon]

lol...stupid 360 shit...my nintendos and ataris never had all these fuckin problems and glitches and slowdowns and everything.....serves this new gen of gamers right lol lol

 

LOL LOL How witty you are.

[PressureCooker2600]

lol...stupid 360 shit...my nintendos and ataris never had all these fuckin problems and glitches and slowdowns and everything.....serves this new gen of gamers right lol lol

 

LOL LOL How witty you are.

 

Witty is my middle name

[JB]

lol...stupid 360 shit...my nintendos and ataris never had all these fuckin problems and glitches and slowdowns and everything.....serves this new gen of gamers right lol lol

Mmmm, slowdown...

[sega saturn x]

lol...stupid 360 shit...my nintendos and ataris never had all these fuckin problems and glitches and slowdowns and everything.....serves this new gen of gamers right lol lol

Ban please.

[ubersaurus]

That article has a pretty healthy attitude about it. If you hack your X360 firmware, then you deserve what you get. If your system becomes a big white brick, then sucks to be you.

 

So, I really have to wonder why it is that people have the complete reverse attitude when it comes to the PSP.

 

 

Most of the PSP hacking goes towards running emulators and video files on the thing. 360 hacking goes pretty much solely to pirating existing games. My guess is people are fine with emulation, but don't like pirates so much

[JB]

That article has a pretty healthy attitude about it. If you hack your X360 firmware, then you deserve what you get. If your system becomes a big white brick, then sucks to be you.

 

So, I really have to wonder why it is that people have the complete reverse attitude when it comes to the PSP.

 

 

Most of the PSP hacking goes towards running emulators and video files on the thing. 360 hacking goes pretty much solely to pirating existing games. My guess is people are fine with emulation, but don't like pirates so much

Arr, matey!

 

Seriously, I wonder when/if it'll see something more noteworthy.

XBox 1 was the posterchild for legitimate mod usage.

[Shannon]

Seems microsofts update effected some refurbished xbox 360's as well.

 

An updated version of the Fall Update is now available on Xbox Live which has eliminated issues relating to new or refurbished consoles failing after applying the Fall Update. Users who have already applied the Fall Update and are seeing an error message should call their local Xbox Support telephone number. If you already have the update, you will not be prompted for another update.

 

Nice to know that sometime in the future I could sign on to live, get a forced update and have my machine unuseable till they fix it. Microsoft sure is playing with fire here.

[Lord Helmet]

That nice to know. I have a media center pc, although I do not remember having any difficulties. But the price I was referring to is some DVD modders were getting failures because of this update.

 

Media center 2005 works fine...just not 2004 Now my problems are solved!

 

Dammit. WMP 11 only works with XP MCE 2005 Dammit! I STILL cant streamn video.

[Paranoid]

If MS was actively targetting the modder community, it'd be a diffrent story.

You shouldn't intentionally break someone's toys just because they're not using them like you said to.

 

I think this is the problem. Microsoft is showing all indiciation of actively trying to take the battle to people they feel are in violation of their EULA(s), and in this example, it could be argued that perhaps they have designed the update specifically to cause failures on machines that are not in EULA compliance. Which is a step too far.

 

In my mind, the first step in this direction was Intel's P3 serial #. They responded to public outcry (which they STILL don't understand, internally), by making the serial # disabled by default. But it is still there on every P3 and Intel CPU since. And CAN be enabled, arguably without the end user being aware of this.

 

Which ties in to the XBox. With XBMC on a hacked XBox (not that I would know, as we've discussed, I was unable to successfully mod mine), you can go in and look at the system info. It tells you the P3 CPU S/N, the location of manufacture, the BIOS, the current uptime, and the total culmulnitive uptime. There is a LOT of information that the Xbox is logging, internally, about how it is being used, and really, who knows when, how, are using what method that information may be leaking out and to who it may be directed. It would take sophisticated filters and an expert in packet sniffing to really determine what ALL the network chatter on their LAN (and leaking to the WAN) might be. My guess is that there are SOME people who do this... but, my experience is that there are very few people who are PROFESSIONALS in the industry who are really capable of doing a thorough job of this kind of network layer analysis. There are even fewer casual XBox gamers who qualify. In a nutshell, I don't have a lot of trust for ANY of my systems that are connected in any way to a public network, least of all ones that are running Win32 or Microsoft products.

 

As an example of how difficult it can be, you may see a lot of traffic over port 80 to a variety of web addresses, which may look like it is coming from IE (so tightly integrated into the OS and acting as invisible core of a diverse bunch of apps). Going in and finding out what the reoccuring connection to 204.192.77.24:80 is isn't that tough... and may require some pinging, a WhoIs lookup, maybe a finger. But, then look at all the traffic, across all the ports, to all the destination addresses, and at some point, you just can't pursue such a granular approach to traffic security.

 

I suppose I'm off on a tangent here, but this is the foundation that causes the problem, and it is consumer ignorance, first, and consumer apathy, second (although they may be related) that allows companies to get away with this. If consumers would simply NOT tolerate these infringements (against their basic civil liberties, I would argue), they wouldn't occur. I think that a new, auto-updating patch that disables hacked Xbox dashes is highly suspicious, at the very least and I think saying that "They're getting what they deserve" lets Microsoft off the hook too easily. I forget which philosopher argues that an accusation on insufficient evidence is wrong, even if the accused turns out to be guilty, but, that would seem to be the case here. (Of course, I have insufficient evidence to claim that Microsoft is in fact guilty, myself). But Microsoft certainly *deserves* the suspicion based on their past track record, and *if* they are in fact guilty of what I am suggesting, then there is NO justification for their act, even if it targets and punishes people who are also guilty of some "wrong".

[Paranoid]

Oooh... Additional, the XBMC sysinfo also reports hard drive manufacturer, model, and s/n. This alone, reported back, would be a good benchmark to determine if an XBox had been soft/hard modded, assuming that it matches against a db in Redmond (or where ever) which has the original configuration of every xBox sold logged into it. This isn't really such a difficult thing to achieve, and the implications are staggeringly Orwellian.

 

In this case, imagine that during the manufacturing process, every xbox is marked with a unique s/n, every CPU has a unique s/n, and every hard drive has a unique s/n. This automatically goes into a db as the system is assembled, and every time th xBox gets a live connection to the public internet, it reports home with the current configuration information. XBox live doesn't even have to come into the equation.

 

I doubt anything specifically like this is occuring (I think someone WOULD notice the traffic and analyize it, if it were this blatent). But it is certainly possible.

 

But I think the real lesson here is that XBox Live is specifically a bad idea. It is overpriced, over-rated, and populated by the lowest common denominator of XBox consumers, and, IMHO, presents a significant personal security risk. You're inviting the vampire into your house. I dropped it just on the quality of the OTHER subscribers long before my concerns grew this significant about the implications of having an account. It absolutely convinces me that I'm not interested in doing any kind of business with Microsoft on a subscription based model.

Edited November 2, 2006 by Paranoid

[moycon]

But I think the real lesson here is that XBox Live is specifically a bad idea. It is overpriced, over-rated, and populated by the lowest common denominator of XBox consumers, and, IMHO, presents a significant personal security risk. You're inviting the vampire into your house.

 

I must say....You chose the perfect Username

[Shannon]

At the time I initially posted the thread there was some uncertainty as to whether microsoft has tried anything specifically to stop the pirating of software on their 360's. Initially it just seemed like an odd little hiccup. So in a sense, yeah some people have to pay a price (aka take a chance) that something will go wrong when modifying a box in such a way.

 

Until now microsoft has simply been banning people off of xbox live if they had a modified xbox (which is no biggy to me).

 

Later indications though cast doubt on what microsoft is up to. But if anything the deal with "refurbished" 360's makes Microsofts actions even more dangerous because now they changes they make can potentially effect people who have simply "done nothing" with their xbox 360.

Edited November 2, 2006 by Shannon

[Paranoid]

But I think the real lesson here is that XBox Live is specifically a bad idea. It is overpriced, over-rated, and populated by the lowest common denominator of XBox consumers, and, IMHO, presents a significant personal security risk. You're inviting the vampire into your house.

 

I must say....You chose the perfect Username

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?a...;showentry=1700

 

Edited November 3, 2006 by Paranoid

[JB]

If MS was actively targetting the modder community, it'd be a diffrent story.

You shouldn't intentionally break someone's toys just because they're not using them like you said to.

 

I think this is the problem. Microsoft is showing all indiciation of actively trying to take the battle to people they feel are in violation of their EULA(s), and in this example, it could be argued that perhaps they have designed the update specifically to cause failures on machines that are not in EULA compliance. Which is a step too far.

It's not very likely to be an overtly hostile act since it only killed a specific version of a specific firmware hack(versions both before and after the current version worked just fine), and killed some MS-refurbished machines.

 

 

 

I think that a new, auto-updating patch that disables hacked Xbox dashes is highly suspicious,

Hacked drives, and a very specific subset of them. As well as some drives that weren't hacked(unless MS is taking in machines that have been modded and shipping them back out without properly testing, which would unveil the mod).

 

 

Which ties in to the XBox. With XBMC on a hacked XBox (not that I would know, as we've discussed, I was unable to successfully mod mine), you can go in and look at the system info. It tells you the P3 CPU S/N, the location of manufacture, the BIOS, the current uptime, and the total culmulnitive uptime.

Some of which is rather useful(BIOS revision).

 

Current uptime isn't exactly hard. Especially when you have a real-time clock. And could be added by XBMC. I'm not familiar enough with the app.

 

 

Oooh... Additional, the XBMC sysinfo also reports hard drive manufacturer, model, and s/n.

So?

That's a standard feature on IDE(and SCSI, I think) drives.

Watch your PC's boot sequence next time. You'll likely see hard drive manufacturer and model # right there. Along with any optical drives.

Serial code, while available, is not typically printed.

 

 

This alone, reported back, would be a good benchmark to determine if an XBox had been soft/hard modded, assuming that it matches against a db in Redmond (or where ever) which has the original configuration of every xBox sold logged into it. This isn't really such a difficult thing to achieve, and the implications are staggeringly Orwellian.

You still assume just because information is available, it's reported.

 

Aside from being standard computer behavior, much of that information has a good deal of legitimate use.

The only thing I don't see a use for is manufacture location.

 

 

You should be more worried that each XBox has a unique ID # that is KNOWN to be reported over Live. Same with OS revision.

It's what they use to ban 'Boxes.

 

In this case, imagine that during the manufacturing process, every xbox is marked with a unique s/n, every CPU has a unique s/n, and every hard drive has a unique s/n.

We already know all of that, actually. 2/3s are due to the use of semi-standard components instead of custom ones.

 

This automatically goes into a db as the system is assembled, and every time th xBox gets a live connection to the public internet, it reports home with the current configuration information. XBox live doesn't even have to come into the equation.

In which case, MS could ban modded systems from XBox Live just for being hooked up, and disabling mods before signing into Live wouldn't work.

 

 

But I think the real lesson here is that XBox Live is specifically a bad idea. It is overpriced, over-rated, and populated by the lowest common denominator of XBox consumers...

The lowest common denominator dominates any given sample.

There ARE intelligent people on Live, they're just hard to find through the swarms of retarded monkeys.

 

Cost is, obviously, a matter of personal preference.

 

...and, IMHO, presents a significant personal security risk. You're inviting the vampire into your house.

But you've already stated that Live isn't necesssary for the machine to "phone home" as long as it has a connection.

 

 

I dropped it just on the quality of the OTHER subscribers long before my concerns grew this significant about the implications of having an account. It absolutely convinces me that I'm not interested in doing any kind of business with Microsoft on a subscription based model.

I dropped online gaming as a whole for similar reasons, actually.

Outside of prearranged games with friends, you'll just wind up with a bunch of baboons.

Edited November 3, 2006 by JB