Because this ordeal seems to be in legal ambiguity, I'd point out that halting the distribution of these keys, as TI requests that we do, comes down to courtesy. It seems silly for them to ask this of the community whose future they stymied as much they could by releasing the most closed graphing calculator family to date. Tit for tat has no place in the interpretation of legislation, but that doesn't seem to be the issue here. I, for one, would take them more seriously if they could be more responsive with matters pertaining to Nspire.

Might I direct you all to a Slashdot-frontpage pingback?

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/09/21/ 1418256/TI-vs-Calculator- Hackers?art_pos=2

(or click my URL on this post)

groovy. I forgot I had made that submission to slashdot. Its been a busy day.

Too late, TI, even people who have no use for these keys (BASIC programmers like me) alerady have them saved somewhere on their PC and I wouldn't be surprised if they were alerady on p2p sites.

Yup, they are: http://thepiratebay.org / torrent/5096920

Trying to stop the spread of these now is an exersize in futility.

http://www.cs.drexel.edu/ ~jlg95/stuff/keys.zip [remove the space, or click my link]

Also....they're on Wikileaks. And a few mailing lists.

No, they're NOT on Wikileaks, only 2 or 3 are, not all 14.

Actually, someone did post the rest of the keys on the "discussion" page on the Wikileaks page.

El Reg has posted an article on this story - see website link or http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/23/ texas_instruments_calculator_hacking/

Working link to the article: http://urlx.eu/_Mzk5OQ

Foiled again! Thanks for the fixed link. :-)

So does this mean that TI is just being an A hole and is JUST now figuring out that the calculator community can do this stuff? I myself have written numerous programs (for personal use) that solve problems automatically in my math class (I understood the method before I wrote the program) and have always wondered why those were allowed, but not potentially our own better firmware that we can update that has new things built in or we can extend to have built in.

I doubt any of this is a surprise to that department. TI actually used to outsource a few projects to the original Detatched Solutions crew around 2001.

What conserns me mostly is the sudden switch from 3rd-party friendly calcs...to totally locked-down models engineered to repel the community. You could make the case that this is all to satisfy the standardized testing comissions. It's unfortunante, but clearly one of the realities they deal with. Still, it's all speculation because there's a lot of inside information we don't have from TI. It would please the curiosity of many calc fans to hear thier unofficial take on the issue.

I know what you mean. I just hope that TI doesn't become like Sony is with the PSP. Any system hand held, console, or anything with a link port of some sort (and some not), are vulnerable for the community of users to get cracked open and write their own software. As long as people aren't using the mods to run pirated software (who wants to run a pirated 84+ program...seriously), then there is no legal issue at all. I don't see TI complaining about the $5 link cable that we can make rather than pay $20-$30 for theirs, so why are they complaining that we can write our own software rather than be tortured with theirs that is never updated.

The EFF has gotten involved and is probably going to help us fight these DMCA notices, so stay tuned.

Do you have a link to this?

No. Brandon is the primary source.