Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Reverse Engineer Finds Kindle's Hidden Features

Posted by Zonk on from the under-the-hood dept.

bensafrickingenius writes "CNET's Crave site has an interesting article on Amazon's Kindle eBook reader, and the extensive reverse-engineering that fans of the device have accomplished. The site specifically points out the work of Igor Skochinsky at the Reversing Everything website. His work on the Kindle's Root Shell has revealed some fascinating goodies: 'Among the ones uncovered and described on his blog are a basic photo viewer, a minesweeper game, and most interesting, location technology that uses the Kindle's CDMA networking to pinpoint its position. There also are some basic location-based services that call up a Google Maps view to show where you are and nearby gas stations and restaurants.'"

4 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Flagged. by Durrok · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah, you missed that one.

    Good movie, although a bit date today

    --
    I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
  2. "Fiona"? by autophile · · Score: 3, Informative

    A root password of "Fiona"? Wasn't that the name of the girl in Neal Stephenson's novel _The Diamond Age_? The one who was educated by the nanotechnological Primer book?

    --Rob

    --
    Towards the Singularity.
  3. Cellphone CDMA location by spaceyhackerlady · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...location technology that uses the Kindle's CDMA networking to pinpoint its position

    All current CDMA chipsets have location capability, due to E911 requirements for cellphones. They go through all sorts of gyrations to get a fix quickly when starting the GPS from cold (can't leave it running all the time or it would kill the battery), and to get a fix in "difficult" environments like urban canyons. They get a rough location by triangulating on cell towers, determine available satellites, doppler and code phase estimates, then tell the GPS what it should be listening for. Instead of taking several minutes from a cold start, they get a fix in a second or two.

    When you get a cellphone the service agreement will say that you agree to be located if you call 911 (read it, it's there). Any other location must be initiated by you, or with your permission, due to privacy issues. I did software for dedicated CDMA location devices and users got a special service agreement from Sprint. It said if you buy and use this thing, you are agreeing to be located.

    It's pretty slick.

    ...laura

    1. Re:Cellphone CDMA location by spaceyhackerlady · · Score: 4, Informative

      Do a search for "AFLT". They estimate the travel time from multiple cell towers (easy with CDMA) and work from there. They call it triangulation, though it's a lot closer to hyperbolic navigation.

      ...laura