My XBox has arrived safely. Exactly as advertised which is perfect. The box is in a good condition – checking out the serial number I found that it was a version 1 XBox – which means very little actually. It came with a Samsung drive which is good since it reads the best collection of blank media allowing me to load Linux onto the device without too many issues.

I tried to install the new software onto it but I could not get it to work. I think it is an issue with how I am burning things to CD. Using an ISO file correctly formatted worked first go. I am rather pleased. The one thing I have not worked out how to do is look at files on my server. It is on the other side of a firewall, but it is a different IP range and I have not quite worked that out. After all I have real work to do!

From Israel comes news that sending data via SNAIL’s is faster than ADSL or carrier pidgeon. The campers did a test, and compared sending files via ADSL, Carrier Pidgeon and on DVD’s in the form of a rickshaw pulled by a Snail. And guess what? The SNAIL WON! I guess there are a lot of people who might be surprised by this… There was a statement a few years back that the fastest network in the USA is a 747 filled with CD-ROMS. Lets do the calculations. 100 CD’s weigh maybe 1KG. A 747 can carry maybe 100,000KG, or 10 million DVD’s. Assume 4 GBytes each (yeah, I know you can get dual layer), that becomes 40 Million GBytes, or 40,000 Terabytes. Divide this by 20,000 (the time of a cross-country flight), and you get about 2 terabytes per second across a country. That is FAST! Of course I have ignored the time to compile the DVD’s at each end, and the latency issue (which is extreme at about six hours), but It is still rather fast.