This literally happened in the last 24 hours. XDA forums member found a way to unlock Surface RT and give it ability to run 3rd party programs in desktop mode. A slew of x86 ports followed.

You can read about it here

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/10/3863818/windows-rt-jailbreak-tool-released

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092348

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092158

its a little late now but i will try this tomorrow on my surface...

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 Update Feb 22

This scene has completely exploded with over 50 desktop apps ported so far.

Details here

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2092348

I have 7zip, Fiddler, DOS box, Quake 2 all installed on my Surface RT and all running great. Chrome and Firefox are on their way...

Well my interest in the surface just shot up 500 percent. I wonder how the performance is for normal software. If it isn't bad I would be very interested in getting one of these when they get a small pricecut. $1000 isn't worth it for the surface pro, but if I could get a surface with keyboard for under $500, and more basic programs work fine, I might just pick one up.

I was going to get one anyways, but now I'm probably going to get one sooner than expected. I forgot where I read it but Microsoft already responded to this jailbreak. Because it doesn't pose a security risk, they seem to welcome this. Similar to all the Kinect hacks, they might even encourage it.

Wow. I had thought it was a hardware issue not a software lockout. Naughty, naughty MS. If the hardware can run it you shouldn't stop it.

MS probably wanted to push their app store as the primary software delivery method.

Hardware can't run them natively. All programs have to be recompiled...

But all the programs still have to be recompiled to run on the arm processors so the only benefit from this is that we dont have to use the microsoft store right?

Hmmm.. I'll get an intern to do this on monday at the office.. if ms gets mad at us we'll just fire the intern...

Seriously? That's...not very nice.

Geez.. Since when is everyone on this site so serious.. By now you people would have know my interns are always people incapable of doing something technical like jailbreaking... and blonde, female, slender, nice rack, between the age of 18 till 21..

Updated original post