When the original Xbox came out I was still living in Boston and attending grad school at MIT. My friend Bunnie reverse-engineered the hardware copy protection on the thing and apparently became somewhat of a celebrity in both the RevEng and Xbox Warez crowds, completely unbeknownst to me. At the time I was pretty busy with school and didn't really follow the progress of the quest to put Linux on the Xbox.

I understand that there isn't any really good practical reason to have Linux on an Xbox, though it is humorous considering the vitriol MS marketing seems to have towards open source software.... Considering how crippled I found the first Xbox despite its hardware capabilities, it was nice to see an OS on there that could take better advantage of what was available.

Anyway, now that I seem to have transitioned myself into the role of a hardware and embedded systems engineer, I find the idea of reverse-engineering such a complex system as the Xbox360 that much more intriguing. I'd help out if I had more time and, say... a spare $400 to actually buy a console that I would only rip apart. I think this time around I'm content to sit on the sidelines and watch, but I will be paying much closer attention to the progress as it is made. It's nice to get in at the beginning and be able to witness the entire evolution of something like this.

Speaking of getting in at the beginning and Microsoft, I totally missed the A.I. ARG back in 2001, which I still contend is Microsoft's most innovative product to date. I see now that they had another ARG as viral marketing for the Xbox360, and I missed it as well. However, I think what made the A.I. game so great was the fact that ARGs were entirelly new at the time (certainly on that scale, anyway). Now it has become old-hat, somehow. Oh well. Wish I could have been there.