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TI vs. Calculator Hackers

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the this-never-ends-well dept.

Nyall writes "So a bunch of TI calculator programming enthusiasts got together to factor the keys Texas Instruments uses to sign the operating system binaries for the ti83+ (a z80 architecture) and the ti89/v200 (a 68k architecture) series of calculators. Now Texas Instruments is sending out DMCA notices to take them down."

6 of 463 comments (clear)

  1. Wikileaks link by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm a lurker in that community and I have to say I'm extremely disappointed with TI. The community has had to reverse engineer every component of the hardware with no help from TI, and has done an amazing job writing development tools and mapping out which memory addresses do what.

    Here's the wikileaks link to the keys.

    1. Re:Wikileaks link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      And here's the Freenet key for the zip file: freenet:CHK@cua6vt6OGoe8dBOY2D4PR13jt~FvyvmHlMJKXPcXUgs,gFqVGC6lWjlSdE0cizGzWcyE5Y9f5J0QyWo-GNmLluY,AAIC--8/keys.zip

  2. DMCA Misrepresentation claim viable by zavyman · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's highly unlikely that the factors of an RSA private key are subject to copyright protection. Therefore the groups may have a viable claim for DMCA misrepresentation under subsection (f):

    (f) MISREPRESENTATIONS- Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section--
        (1) that material or activity is infringing, or
        (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification,
    shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner's authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.

    Texas Instruments may just have Diebolded itself.

    1. Re:DMCA Misrepresentation claim viable by Nursie · · Score: 5, Informative

      Copyright?

      Wouldn't this be more likely come under the circumvention of cryptographic protection techniques which the DMCA also outlaws?

  3. Re:Math by elfprince13 · · Score: 5, Informative

    As a long time member of the TI community, I have to say that I'm glad Slashdot is covering this. TI consistently works against the enthusiast community, and this is blatantly obvious in their new Nspire line of calculators. The 83+/84+ line has been their one concession to sanctioned assembly programming, and they still threaten legal action against anyone who starts delving into operating system stuff.

  4. Re:No HP??? by volpe · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh well, I figured everyone would get it. HP Calculators use "Reverse Polish Notation" (RPN), also known as "postfix notation". Unlike ordinary "infix notation" calculators, in which you put the operator between the two operands, HP calculators take both operands followed by the operator, thereby eliminating the need for parenthesizing an expression. So, where you might enter "5 * ( 3 + 4 ) =" on an infix calculator, you'd enter "5 [enter] 3 [enter] 4 [enter] + * " on an HP calculator. Every time you enter a number, it gets pushed on the stack. Every operator pops the top two items off the stack, performs the operation, and pushes the result on the stack.

    One can write English sentences the same way if one considers the verb to be the operator, while the subject and direct object are the two operands. Thus, what I wrote was the RPN equivalent of "I can't believe that they would be so shortsighted!".