TI vs. Calculator Hobbyists, Again

Deep Thought writes "Texas Instruments, already infamous thanks to the signing key controversy last year, is trying a new trick to lock down its graphing calculators, this time directed toward its newest TI-Nspire line. The TI-Nspires were already the most controlled of TI's various calculator models, and no third-party development of any kind (except for its very limited form of TI-BASIC) was allowed until the release of the independent tool Ndless. Since its release, TI has been determined to prevent the large calculator programming community from using it. Its latest released operating system for the Nspire family (version 2.1) now prevents the calculators from downgrading to OS 1.1, needed to run Ndless. This is TI's second major attack on Ndless, as the company has already demanded that websites posting the required OS 1.1 remove it from public download [PDF, in French], obviously to prevent use of the tool. Once again, TI is preventing calculator hobbyists from running their own software on calculators they bought and paid for."

Comments

Why bother?!

[JamesP]

Go for HP then. (learn RPN!!)

And even then, if I want to hack it, I'd go for a Palm or software in an iPhone/ Android. The processor and raphics in these things runs circles around calculators.

I understand for some occasions (tests, etc) it has to be a calculator, but I doubt it would be allowed to run modified software.

Time for discreet calculators is almost over.

Re:Why bother?!

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

If you use graphing calcs and own an ipod touch or iphone, I suggest checking out this.

Its $0.99, ands beats the pants off of the ti83/84 series (pinch zoom rocks for function graphs!)

I did a demo in one of my classes last semester and (not surprisingly) all students which own such devices said they'd rather use this instead of a standalone calc. we're thinking of buying a set of calcs for instructor checkout during exams, thereby eliminating the need to force hundreds of our students to shell out $100+ for a calc they'll use for a semester and then forget about
 

What would HS have been like

[KingArthur10]

I couldn't have survived high school without something to keep my mind occupied. I constantly programmed on my TI-83+, and I couldn't imagine NOT having the ability to script tasks or create random programs for fun. The TI-83 got me into programming, and it's helped me hone many of my logic skills!

How long since you were in school?

[betterunixthanunix]

I understand for some occasions (tests, etc) it has to be a calculator, but I doubt it would be allowed to run modified software.

Which represents a TREMENDOUS market for TI, one that they are not going to give up on so easily. You may doubt that modified software will be allowed, but nobody is looking at checksums before you enter a testing room. The assumption is that you have not modified your calculator, and if that assumption is shaken, it will mean the end of a lot of calculators for standardized tests. If I were to try to guess why TI is fighting these hackers, I would say that it is all about the standardized tests, where TI calculators are exceedingly popular.

Re:How long since you were in school?

[HungryHobo]

we weren't allowed used any programmable calculators or calculators which could store info.

Re:How long since you were in school?

[JamesP]

I graduated in 2004.

Funny enough, in my university there were ZERO TI Calcs, we would all be in HP48/HP48+ and beginning to see the 49s... (not in US, as you may have guessed)

But I've seen TI calcs (in France), people would use TI-92s and entry-level models, still, there was one HP48 in my class there.

[quote]If I were to try to guess why TI is fighting these hackers, I would say that it is all about the standardized tests, where TI calculators are exceedingly popular.[/quote]

Makes sense... Still, I'd guess they would ban the 'fancy' calculators.

At the same time, people would not check the fact that some people had entire tests solved on their 48G+ (I had the 48G)

Re:How long since you were in school?

[pmc]

(With apologies to Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch)

When I were a lad it were the Three Yorkshiremen sketch.

On't radio.

Re:How long since you were in school?

[Anonymous Coward]

Standardized tests should never include calculators. They are to test knowledge of concepts, not button pushing skills.

Re:How long since you were in school?

[Legion303]

That's right, kids, in the real world you won't have access to reference materials and may very well need to solve equations in your head to save your life, MacGyver style.

In elementary school I wasn't allowed to count on my fingers because the teacher thought it was more important to know addition tables by rote instead of relying on other learning methods. So I learned to visualize counting on my toes. I wound up with a B.Sc. in theoretical mathematics. They sure showed me.

Re:How long since you were in school?

[maxwell demon]

In elementary school I wasn't allowed to count on my fingers because the teacher thought it was more important to know addition tables by rote instead of relying on other learning methods.

Of course. After all, you could lose your fingers in an accident, and if rely on your fingers to count, you'll be lost. :-)

Re:How long since you were in school?

[Aboroth]

Well now in social situations when somebody asks you how many chicken nuggets you want, or how long you have been with the company, you don't look like a retard when you put your hands up and start counting fingers.

Seriously? You can't see the value in forcing kids to learn how to count in their heads? And you can't tell that your teacher helped you figure out how to improve your mental visualization?

Just. Wow.

Re:How long since you were in school?

[bsDaemon]

The calculators will be destroyed by the zombies to strengthen the brains of the humans, thus increasing their nutritional value to the zombies. DUH.

Re:How long since you were in school?

[Yoozer]

For zero and negative numbers, I always had to ask the poor fellow who lost parts of his hand in a bandsaw accident. I couldn't bring him to school either :(.

Re:How long since you were in school?

[NormalVisual]

Well now in social situations when somebody asks you how many chicken nuggets you want, or how long you have been with the company, you don't look like a retard when you put your hands up and start counting fingers.

The sadistic side of me thinks it would probably enjoy seeing someone do that, but with Chisanbop.

Re:How long since you were in school?

[orangesquid]

My HS math teacher spent her spare time designing her tests carefully so that no calculators were needed. If you got down to the end of a question, and you had messed up and ended up with something that *would* need manual calculation, you didn't have to work out the calculation--you'd just lose the point(s) on whatever theoretical part you screwed up, and that was it.
No calculators were ever allowed---nor were they needed.

I learned one hell of a lot of math.... including vector calc and laplace transforms senior year (finished ap calc bc junior year along with 11 other kids, so that teacher wrote course material for a calc 3 class).

Re:How long since you were in school?

[Anonymous Coward]

the teacher could wipe those bitches clean in five seconds ... Oh, and she could program.

Do you have her phone number?

Re:How long since you were in school?

[adonoman]

Chisenbop? So you can count to 99 using two hands? Because bi-quinary arithmetic is so easy. I just count in binary on my fingers. I can count to 31 on each hand, or 1023 if I use both. Plus, binary arithmetic is easier than even decimal arithmetic and it's easy to run a basic full-adder algorithm over both hands and read off the result.

Re:How long since you were in school?

[adonoman]

Who said anything about converting. My wife sends me to the store to pick up 1100 eggs. My shoes are size 1001, I'm 101' 1011" tall, and I weigh 11000011 lbs. My kids are 111 and 101 years old. Although, it does confuse teachers when the kids tell them they just celebrated their hundred and eleventieth birthday.

Standardized tests

[betterunixthanunix]

There is a huge market for graphing calculators because of standardized tests, and those tests have specific requirements on the limits of the calculator's functionality. If you can modify the calculator's firmware, then you can make a run around those rules -- the inspections of calculators rarely involve turning the calculator on, and even if it did, it would be trivial to disguised hacked firmware. These standardized tests rely on a perception of fairness and accuracy, which creates a requirement for standard calculator firmware, which means that a major part of TI's calculator business is created by the un-hackability of their calculators.

Re:Standardized tests

[Miamicanes]

> Then either don't allow calculators at all or provide standard calculators.

Or require students to use a specific model of calculator, with their names printed on the back. Before each test, collect the calculators, shuffle them, and hand them out randomly. Statistically, absent wholesale class-wide collusion, your problem is solved.

Re:NO NOT MATH

[Anonymous Coward]

Get your hand off it, you'll go blind if you keep doing that.

Re:preventing hobbyist software?

[Richard_at_work]

Actually, from the sound of it, TI are preventing the hobbyists from distributing software that TI hold the copyright for and the hobbyists do not have permission to distribute - can't really see an issue there.

The problem is schools!

[zippthorne]

Well, not the schools specifically. But that schools are TI's primary market for graphing calculators, and they have a huge markup due to using outdated hardware, so they're going to want to push them.

Unfortunately, schools require the calculators to be crippled to prevent their use for cheating (which could be non-math related cheating...), thus ensuring that students will learn to lean on devices that they will never see in their subsequent careers in industry or research.

If the portable math-machine really were something that people felt they needed, you'd see iPhone apps that were actually useful: the hardware is far more capable than the piddling processors they're putting in the math-class toys, or you'd see the prices of dedicated hardware drop into the $10-$20 range that scientific calculators have been in for decades.

Graphing calculators, at the moment, seem to have little more purpose than to bilk schools out of money from well-meaning but ill-informed "technology initiatives."

Then... why not release a hackable calculator?

[IYagami]

I mean, if there is enough market for a hackable calculator, then TI should sell another model which its user could load software into.

I thought TI had seen the light...

[yeremein]

When I was in high school, Zshell (an exploit that allowed running native Z80 assembly on a TI-85) was all the rage. The exploit and various apps (mostly games) spread virally throughout the school. I did some Z80 assembly programming myself, and it was a learning experience arguably more useful to my career than anything I learned in high school...

Years later at college, when my old 85 had been handed down to a younger sibling, I found I needed a graphing calculator for a physics class. I bought a TI-89 and was impressed to see TI allowed it to run native software, no hacks required. (There were still hacks, to get around a few limitations such as code size, but even these limitations were relaxed in later firmware versions.) I spent far more time programming the calculator than actually using it as a calculator.

Now they're back in their lock-it-down mode? Shame. It always disappoints me when manufacturers go out of their way to make their devices less useful--and in this case, a less capable learning tool, for budding programmers anyway.

Re:I thought TI had seen the light...

[Antisyzygy]

I think that most scientists, physicists and mathematicians are using matlab, mathematica and C/C++ to do the majority of their calculations these days. I work exclusively with C/C++ and matlab. A graphing calculator has nowhere near the capability of Matlab, but I suppose it is much more expensive for a license. However, most companies and universities will get you a license to do your work.

Re:NO NOT MATH

[rockNme2349]

we mathematicians DO NOT wee calculators. We don't do arithmetic. Don't tag this math.

Re:NO NOT MATH

[Compaqt]

Don't tag me, bro!

funeral drone

[epine]

If you don't like that don't buy one. None of your rights are being infringed. You got what you paid for and you are free to do with it as you will.

Nicely done. You got a passing grade in the free market school cheer ("Viva caveat emptor!") and DNF in every aspect of the situation worth discussing. You've clearly set yourself ahead well ahead of the obese peloton walking their bikes up the intellectual incline with loud proclamations that TI has no moral right to make a stupid decision (which as you rightly point out is their eternal privilege).

With any nose at all for controversy, you might have wondered out loud who TI regards as their real customers for this product. In a shocking development, it might not be the high school students (or parents thereof) who actually shell out their hard won cash. There's a challenging concept to swallow for a transactional reductionist.

TI might regard their customers for this product to be school board administrators who hold the power to set curriculum standards which induces teachers to set exams that are biased toward the success of students buying a particular TI product, abused of most of its generative learning potential by the grasping grubbiness of TI corporate headquarters.

In an educational system that prizes testability over learning, perhaps this is exactly what the true customer demands.

But as you point out, if you don't like it, you don't have to buy one. It's not like the customers of the school board (ostensibly the students) have any say in the educational product they consume, supposing they actually got together and groused publicly. It is their disempowered cash after all, that turns the main propeller.

But then, as your stellar argument has it, if the school system is corrupt you don't have to attend. There's the beauty of libertarianism. You've got a perfect retort for everything, in the world as it ought to exist.

Of the ten or more creative ways to look at this situation, caveat emptor drives the hearse.

Re:NO NOT MATH

[digitig]

The kid counting his candies is still establishing a bijection between the candies and his fingers whether he knows it or not. Anyway, my point was that thinking "arithmetic is the base operations for math" is a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of what math is for somebody who claims to be a mathematician.

Re:NO NOT MATH

[inKubus]

That reminds me of a pretty funny thing I saw today. There's a group on Facebook advocating that police have to yell "Pikachu!" before tazing anyone. What a country.