TI Calculator DRM Defeated

josath writes "Texas Instruments' flagship calculator, the Nspire, was hacked to allow user-written programs earlier this year. Earlier this month, TI released an update to the OS that runs on the calculator, providing no new features, but only blocking the previous hack. Now, just a few weeks later, Nleash has been released, which defeats this protection. The battle rages on as users fight for the right to run their own software on their own hardware."

Comments

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

FU TI!

Re:Well...

[TFGeditor]

Why the parent is modded "Offtopic" is beyond me. TI's draconian attempt to control what consumers do with, to, or on property that they purchased and own is reprehensible.

So, fuck you TI, indeed.

what

[mrphoton]

last time i used a graphics calculator (before I migrated to octave/matlab/maple), the whole point of the thing was that you could program it? And why would anybody spend 100$ on a calculator when you can almost get a laptop for that price today?

Re:what

[betterunixthanunix]

You cannot bring a laptop into a standardized test, that's why TI cares. The only real business TI has with its graphing calculators is high school (and to some extent, middle school) students, and only because the teachers are under the illusion that the calculators cannot do everything that a laptop can do.

Re:what

[Peach Rings]

What, you can still write programs for the included BASIC interpreter, you just can't run your own code on the hardware (no C/assembly allowed). So they have no ground to stand on in terms of testing integrity, and it's obvious that they're unjustly trying to control people's hardware after they buy it.

Re:what

[betterunixthanunix]

As it turns out, and this was mentioned the last time there was a TI article on /., a common strategy schools use is to press the reset button on the calculator, which clears out BASIC programs and whatnot. It seems, however, that the reset button does not touch the firmware -- which is why TI is probably worried about this situation.

I am vehemently opposed to DRM, but I would not go as far as to claim that the companies pushing DRM want to control their users just for the sake of control. These people are not twirling their mustachios and laughing to each other about their evil plots -- they have a reason for wanting to control their users, and it almost always boils down to making money. TI is worried about losing the only remaining market for graphing calculators, so they will go to any length, including undermining user freedoms, to try to maintain that market.

Re:what

[Anonymous Coward]

User freedom isn't even involved.
People only buy these calculators for the standardized tests, and the tests are standardized because the calculators are locked-out pieces of shit.

It's just a monopoly perpetrated between educational facilities, TI, and the test makers.

Re:what

[nedlohs]

Writing a program during the exam is just ever so subtly different from entering the exam with a bunch of programs already loaded onto the calculator.

Re:what

[tomhudson]

So just cut the on-board trace from the reset button. They can press it all they want at that point.

Heck, I can see a new market niche - unresetable calculators. Hey, Ferris, you want to make some quick money to fund your next day off?

Re:what

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is pretty simple, the school buys enough pure calculators for the examinations, and let the kids use their own in lessons and at home. In the grand scheme of things, it's a piss in the ocean and they'll last for many years. Mathematics for kids isn't going to change much now that slide-rules and log tables aren't exactly core syllabus.

Re:what

[Firethorn]

Pushing reset results in visible screen changes. You can both have firmware fake a reset in that case or have the cheating system embedded into the firmware.

If the calculator won't reset, then they're either going to do a closer check for cheat stuff or just not let you have the calculator(hope you brought a backup!).

Re:what

[mangu]

And why would anybody spend 100$ on a calculator when you can almost get a laptop for that price today?

Hmmm, let's say you can get *half* a netbook for that price.

The answer why people buy calculators is simple: the keyboard. A full computer may be much more powerful, but there are people who just need to do calculations and there's nothing like a specialized keyboard to speed that up.

If the price were right (let's say about $20) I bet there would be a market for a USB calculator keyboard that you can connect to the computer.

Re:what

[_133MHz]

A Dual NAND Flash calculator with a hidden switch for choosing between two identical memory banks would be excellent for getting solver apps into standardized tests. Let the instructor reset your main NAND and see all your apps go poof, then switch to the hidden NAND during the test to get all your solver programs back. A reed switch with a flip-flop style latch would be totally invisible from outside of the calculator. Just carry a small magnet and hover it over the magic spot on your calc to switch memory banks.

You could get a console modding guy to do this to your calculator if you aren't good with electronics and/or fine pitch soldering, since they routinely deal with this sort of thing (installing a Dual NAND into a Wii comes to mind).

Re:what

[Anonymous Coward]

A calculator is a crutch. It teaches people not to know how to actually do mathematics and only rely on the machine. When I got my BS in physics, the only time I needed a graphing calculator was during my quantum mechanics and mathematical physics classes where I had do large matrix operations. A little TI-36X solar is good enough for everything else. And yes, I do not think anyone should ever use a graphing calculator in a math or science class to graph things. If you need need that much analysis power then Maple, Matlab, or Mathematica should be used. Anything less should be done in your head.

Re:what

[Anonymous Coward]

Battery life? Weight? Size? Reliability? Could you really not think of any of that? You must be an extraordinarily unimaginative individual.

Re:what

[Anonymous Coward]

Make exams, where programs don't help.
Actually all of the school and university math exams I remembered required a detailed way, how to get to the result, and if there was something wrong on the way, even if the result was right, you got no points at all.
In some of the exams, we were even allowed to use all books and scripts we could bring with us. Didn't help those, who hadn't practised enough or were not good at math a bit, since they just ran out of time or wouldn't have had the right idea, how to calculate something or do a certain proof.

Re:what

[CrashandDie]

These people are not twirling their mustachios

Well, they're students. When I was a student, I used to twirl my mustachio quite a lot.

Unless that wasn't a euphemism?

Re:what

[GeckoAddict]

There's a really easy solution to the cheating problem, and it wouldn't even require TI to do anything different: have the school provide calculators for use during a test. If the school bought 60 calculators, they would ensure they are clear of any programs, hand them out before the test and collect them with the test. If students cheat on homework, it'll be easily reflected when they don't know how to solve the problems on the test. To prevent student's from looking at previous tests online, use different tests (the teacher should be doing this anyway)

They could even take extra steps like hot-gluing the comm ports so there can't be wires going to a cheating device, and make them look different so a teacher walking around during a test can easily tell if the student is not using the same device they were given (like etch a number into each). Assuming the teacher is even remotely paying attention, students can't swap the calculator, and it'll be pretty obvious if they're doing anything to it.

Now that student's can't use their own calculators during the test, TI doesn't have to do anything to prevent people from hacking at the devices they physically own as long it's difficult enough that a teacher would notice (like plugging in a cable) during a test. And the school only needs enough calculators to share between the math classes, so it's not even that much investment. For tests like the SAT they could add $5 to the fee and they're paid for.

Re:what

[Anonymous Coward]

If the education system was so concerned about this they would teach their students the methods to do what they need to by hand and with a slide rule, and then giving them the proper time needed to draw these things out by hand. TI has so little to do with this problem its not even funny. TI should be absolutely going the other way, their customers are not the educators but the students. They are digging their own grave by pandering to the wrong consumers. The whole educator/TI thing smacks of monopolistic endeavor anyway.

Re:what

[Deathlizard]

Unfortunately today, Ti is more concerned about sales vs functionality, and the NSpire is the pinnacle of this philosophy.

Ti's focus is to sell NSpires directly to high schools, so when they ask high schools what they want in a calculator, the first thing they say is "Not a Gameboy" and the 2nd is "use it on ACT/SAT" Stripping the program functionality solves problem #1 and a standardzed test mode called Press to test solves Problem #2.

Now not all of this is Ti's fault. Standardized tests are unbelievably strict when it comes to their test taking procedures. I'm currently the test administrator for our college's ACT's compass college placement test system. ACT requires you to first install a special lockdown browser to your system which administers the test and register the MAC address of your computer systems to ACT. During the test, you must supply scratch paper which you must collect and destroy once the test is complete. They also want students to only use supplied pencils and not their own. All electronic devices must not be visible before, during and after the test, this also includes calculators, since ACT requires the only calculator used is the on screen calculator. Now I know Why ACT requires this stuff (to protect their test & minimize cheating) but if these are the requirements that they have for this system it has to be even more strict for the pen and paper ACT. Now imagine that Ti want's their calculators in on these tests.

It's a shame that Ti has all but abandoned the Engineering / College math market. The Ti-89/92 series was an excellent calculator and it's a shame that they still do more then the nspire, especially when the nspire has so much processing power to burn. For what it's worth, Ti is fixated on keeping the 82 series around with rehashes (83/84/+/etc) until the end of time, while phasing out their more capable models (the 85/86 and 89/92 variants) and replacing them with inferior models (such as the Nspire).

Re:what

[mrphoton]

I still don't get it. 15 years ago when computers which did maths were not practical to carry around a complicated calculator made sense. Today if you want to do real maths for a reason you use a PC. But school and university exam question can be made so they can be solved by hand there is no need to set questions requiring the integral of a Gaussian function. It might do kids some good not to be able to press plot and get a function plotted. May be it would be good for them to think about the roots and where it crosses the axes, then do a bit of differentiation to find the stationary points.

Re:what

[couchslug]

Wear the magnet in a pinky ring or on a necklace instead of carrying it conventionally.

Re:what

[NormalVisual]

On the flip side, that means that only 60 calculators get sold to the school instead of hundreds to the students, so from TI's perspective it's probably not a viable solution.

Re:what

[NormalVisual]

Bad form to reply to oneself, but of course I totally failed to account for the fact that the kids will need them anyway for schoolwork outside of tests. This is what happens when you turn your brain off for the weekend....

Re:what

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I don't know if there is a market; but I assume that there is because they already exist.

Your basic USB numeric keypad, for laptops that lack one, is a 5-10 dollar item(assuming you don't make the mistake of buying retail).

Full usb-connected calculators, like the Canon DK100i, are (coincidentally enough) selling for ~$20.

Re:what

[camperslo]

And why would anybody spend 100$ on a calculator when you can almost get a laptop for that price today?

Aren't there emulators for these calculators that run as smartphone apps?

Re:what

[BrokenHalo]

I don't know anything about the nSpire, but my TI-89 has a few different ways of resetting it, some more pervasive than others. The most common key-sequence results in the appearance of a progress-bar thingy for a few seconds, and the UI reverts to the default, and programs, expressions or variables assigned to general memory are deleted. However, programs (user-generated or otherwise) assigned to so-called "archive" memory are not deleted, so a simple script to restore your favourite settings is easy enough to maintain.

Re:what

[BrokenHalo]

The whole educator/TI thing smacks of monopolistic endeavor anyway.

You might be right, if only the majority of students didn't buy Casio calculators, since they're that much cheaper than TI.

Re:what

[Iamthecheese]

A calculator is a crutch. It teaches people not to know how to actually do mathematics and only rely on the machine.

I really don't understand why it's even necessary to be sure any but math students understand the underlying math anymore. Since computers can do that stuff for us shouldn't we be using that time to teach our students how to solve higher level problems? And if it's the underlying math we want to be sure they know why are we letting them have graphing calculators in the test?

Either the problem is how to be sure they know how to prove an equation (then test for that, and you don't need a calculator to do it) or the test is to see if they can solve higher level problems once the underlying equations are solved (then let them use all the tools they can bring)

Are we afraid our engineers will run out of calculators one day? Are we afraid that something bad will happen if 80% of our engineering majors can't do higher level math when they have computers to do it anyway? If I can use the Pythagorean theorem why is the proof of it important? Is the real point of all this to just make school more difficult? A rite of passage? If school should be made difficult for its own sake why are we not using the same study time to teach things that are more likely to be useful?

How many of us spent two years learning high level math, five years forgetting it, and then never really needed it except for the novelty of figuring out a particular problem on our own instead of using established tools?

Re:what

[Sir_Lewk]

Actually, no. The BASIC dialect on the Nspire series of calculators is extremely limited, to the point of being useless.

TI's other calculator offerings (the 83/84 series for instance) allow assembly explicitly, and have a far more powerful BASIC. The point that testing isn't really the cause of this is a good one though, there really isn't any reason for TI to do this other than they are being dicks.

Re:what

[Sir_Lewk]

Even without the ability to write and install new firmwares, you can get around resets.

Re:what

[Spokehedz]

My math teacher would prohibit us from using our own calculators on tests. He had a set of calculators that he kept for when we had tests, and he would hand them out--blanked--and we had to write our own programs on them in the 30mins before the test. His thought was if you could memorize your program to type it out before the test, you deserved to use it on the test. However, most of the students used the extra time to just do the test manually because it really wasen't smart to spend the time on typing out a program you would use maybe 3 times on a test.

Of course I got around that little restriction. I made a small PIC along with a 512KB EEPROM that would load all my programs onto the calculator through the link port that was the size of a matchbox. I could connect it, upload all my programs, and then use them on the tests. It had switches that would let me load the TI83 loadout (the calculators that he supplied) and my TI89 which I used on a daily basis. God, I loved that calc. I would still have it if not for the great coffee incident of 1999... Rest in Peace, TI89. You've done good, now it is time to rest.

Re:what

[fermion]

Just to clear this up, pressing the reset button is never sufficient. At least on the Ti-83 and 84, there was a program that is run from a second known secure calculator that will cause an unknown calculator be wiped clean. It is well known that the 'reset' is incomplete and can be trapped. If this is not done, to all unknown calculators, then it might be argued that the school is not worried about calculators. What we do, and the only secure method I can think of, is to supply ramdom calculators.

In the case of hacking the TI, the only logical reason I can think to do this is to cheat on exams. Otherwise one would have a real calculator, like the HP, which is way more fun.

Re:what

[TangoMargarine]

In the case of hacking the TI, the only logical reason I can think to do this is to cheat on exams. Otherwise one would have a real calculator, like the HP, which is way more fun.

If schools require TI calculators, wouldn't it be much easier to just do fun things with the TI than to buy an additional HP calculator just for fun? Get a gameboy or something instead if you have money burning a hole in your pocket and you aren't going to use it to calculate. That being said, I've heard the TI programming community is much more active than HP's.

Re:what

[FluffyArmada]

The nspire is actually pretty freaking smart about resetting. Instead of actually needing to do a full reset, it has a fancy test-taking mode. You hold down the escape+home(on) key while the calculator is turned off, then you'll get a dialogue asking if you want to enter 'press to test' mode. Once you enter that mode, the calculator resets, and reloads the firmware without deleting anything you've been working on, and a little led on the end of the calculator will blink every few seconds to show that you're in the right mode. And then, the only way to exit the mode is to plug the calculator into either another calculator or a computer with the TI software. But, once you exit the testing mode, all of your stuff will be right where you left it. It can be a huge pain in the ass, but honestly, if TI wants to make cheating really hard, this is sure a good way to do it. Of course, once the DRM on the calculator is defeated... it's going to be fairly trivial to replace the testing image with something more useful... or even just use some assembly code to flash the led.

Re:what

[Nyder]

You cannot bring a laptop into a standardized test, that's why TI cares. The only real business TI has with its graphing calculators is high school (and to some extent, middle school) students, and only because the teachers are under the illusion that the calculators cannot do everything that a laptop can do.

Back in the mid 80's, when i was in high school. We had a science test where we were allowed to bring in calculators to do the math problems with. I had one of those Tandy hand held calculators/computers that had like 1k memory & did basic. I programmed that full of the various stuff I need to know, not as a program, but a bunch of rem statements. lol

Ya, I did well on that test, which i wouldn't of otherwise. So i can understand why TI would be so anal about it, but what they don't realize is schools can easily by pass using any calculators at all for test.

Write a program for tests. One that has a built in calculator (one that can be made to be scientic, or normal, depending on the test.
Have all the computers being monitored by the teacher, sheesh, put webcams on them so you can see the desk the students are on. If someone trys to alt-enter to the desktop, besides having that turned off, it alerts the teacher. and whatever else is needed.

In fact, if I was TI, i would of already designed a program for that, and would of been marketing it to schools.

Re:what

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's the problem. Not knowing how to do math means you don't know when doing some math might be beneficial.

It all passes under as "I did this and still didn't need to use that sub-topic I wasted by time learning", and never realizing that if one had stopped and looked, a little bit of math could have greatly simplified the algorithm. Not all algorithms, mind you, but there are some. Look at the sorry state of what passes for Linux audio even after all these years - dmix and friends, and at how much CPU it uses relative to the sound quality it delivers. Look at stacks of layers, framework upon framework, fragile calls to ever-changing libraries, all in the name of avoiding a little bit of arithmetic in an application.

I have seen quite a few bugs where the underlying cause has been a misunderstanding of arithmetic as implemented by the programming language semantics. Buffer overflows because the coder didn't realize the result of a modulus operator could go negative when the divisor is negative. Incorrect attempts at rounding float to integer using "x + 0.5" which fails for negative x. Some of these errors have even been enshrined in standards, uncaught till afterwards. See for example the "shorten" audio file format: negative residuals are slightly biased relative to the positive ones and leads to file sizes somewhat larger than they would otherwise have been.

So, yes, indeed it is very important to know math. If only so that one can identify which problems could benefit from a serving of it, and know at least enough to hand it off to someone else if they themselves aren't up for the task.

Re:what

[guyminuslife]

I remember on my AP Calculus test, I had a full range of precompiled calculus problem-solving software on my TI-89 that I had gotten from another student. I wasn't cheating---I didn't end up actually using it on the test, but it was there. I'd have had a hard time finding software like that for a Windows machine at the time.

Re:what

[walshy007]

Actually, no. The BASIC dialect on the Nspire series of calculators is extremely limited, to the point of being useless.

For games programming and the like, I completely agree, for programming actual mathematics, what's the problem?

Re:what

[betterunixthanunix]

I really don't understand why it's even necessary to be sure any but math students understand the underlying math anymore

The underlying math still matters. Consider long division as an example; you might think there is no value in knowing long division, but as it turns out, the long division algorithm is a very important theorem in number theory, and many other results depend on it. Not only that, but in ring theory, the long division algorithm and many of the related results are generalized and a number of important ring theory results depend on that.

The basics should not be done away with simply because a machine is available to do the work for you, unless your only goal is job training.

Re:what

[Xveers]

I'm a business major, about to graduate with a BBA in Accounting, and the calculator is by no means a crutch. It is a tool to let me do a LOT of tedious, repetitive math far more accurately and quickly than by hand.

You CAN calculate out a mortgage, depreciation on assets, or a compounded investment portfolio by hand. Each period is only a few basic math steps. You just have to recalculate each period, write down a value, and do it over and over again. Care to estimate how many mistakes you might make just with writing and re-reading or entering numbers? Would you like your mortgage consultant to do that for you? And bill you for that time?

Didn't think so. A calculator automates the tedious parts of my profession so that I can work better. It does the math, but I have to understand HOW it does it, how the variables affect the results, and how to interpret it. Push coming to shove, I could do it by hand. But reality just makes it much easier to use a calculator to crunch out the raw data.

That's what I was taught in University. We do it by hand to understand how our tools work, and then we do it via calculator or Excel to do something usable with it. Understand the basics, and then leverage the power of something that's better at it. You don't slam a carpenter for using a table saw when he could use a handsaw do you? The value of his work isn't what does the cutting, it's the knowledge he has to pick the right tool to give you the result that you want. Why should the usage of a calculator be any different?

Re:what

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually we should just kill them like a lame horse. Sick people are leeches on society and should be done away with.

Re:what

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you become as good at math as you were at designing circuits and programming?

Re:what

[Billly Gates]

I disagree. If you can pass precalc and calc 1 you have to at least know how to add, subtract, multiple, and divide.

The calculators and computers save time. Who would want to do these things by hand? Ok I can compress the shape by manipulating these sets of variables. That should make sense visually. I do not want to do x, y, and z graphs by hand plotting each point and then trying to apply a theorem and see what happens? That would be silly and I do not have the time. Calculus is all about theory and understanding tricks and applying theorems to think outside the box. A calculator wont help you no matter how good it is if you do not understand these concepts as you wont know what to do.

I think elementary school kids do not need calculators and I agree on that. But I do not buy that engineering majors can't do high math. You would flunk out very quickly if you could not.

Re:what

[Billly Gates]

Yep you just need to know the magic financial ratios. That is it as that shows you understand the theory. If you know them then you can do anything and know the concepts to solve most any business problem with tangible assets.

Re:what

[Xaositecte]

I'm not sure what the worry over calculators is anyways, I just recently finished up the calculus series at my school, and most of the tests included a "calculator section" and "non-calculator" section. None of my instruction seemed terribly different from other schools (The only comparison I really have is the MIT lectures on youtube, but I assume that's a pretty good standard!)

In every class, you had to understand the mathematics before you could effectively use the calculator. An awful lot of integration is understanding where the limits are, rather than doing the actual integral. A few other problems would cause the calculator to spit out unusable garbage, forcing you to go do the problem manually anyways.

Someone who "Doesn't actually understand the underlying math" could never pass a decently tested upper level math course, calculator or no.

Re:what

[Omniscient Lurker]

Easiest solution: make people show their work. Yeah test givers have to work to grade them, but it would probably give a more accurate score.

Re:what

[nedlohs]

Yeah right.

Spend effort in writing better tests, as opposed to just only letting the students use locked down calculators.

Real hard choice.

Re:what

[petermgreen]

Surely it's possible to write helper programs that print out the steps as well as the answer.

Just lease the stuff to people

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously if it's that damned important that people only run TI/Apple/etc sanction applications on their particular hardware why don't the companies just lease the stuff to their userbase?

why?

[Monkey-Man2000]

Of all the devices that unnecessarily have DRM, why a calculator? How can TI possibly think this is helpful? They just seem to be neurotically following Apple's lead when they could make their device so much more useful. Ugghh... (and no I didn't RTFA).

Re:why?

[betterunixthanunix]

The last time this came up on /., I said that it is probably about standardized tests. A number of people pointed out that when they were in school, calculators were reset to the factory defaults before they were allowed to use them on an exam. What I have to wonder about, though, is what it means to be reset to "factory defaults" -- I doubt that there is a second copy of the original firmware that will be forced to load when the reset button is pressed. More likely, "factory defaults" only means clearing anything the user created, but leaving the firmware intact.

Thus, if users can just install their own firmware, TI risks having the current illusion that teachers are under -- that the calculators are "less of a computer" than any other computer -- being undermined.

Re:why?

[The MAZZTer]

I think you can hold some keys when the calculator turns on (or when inserting the batteries?) to reset to factory defaults. Since the calculator wouldn't want to store an entire separate copy of the OS in its limited storage, you could keep some stuff around in theory. I haven't used my TI calc for awhile though; my DSi is more fun. :)

Re:why?

[maxwell demon]

Of course the simplest solution would still be for the school to have, say, 100 calculators owned by the school, exclusively to be used in tests. People don't bring their own calculator, they use the school-supplied one. It would be a one-time investment (calculators tend to work for very extended times).

Another solution would be to only allow calculators without permanent storage. Who needs graphing calculators anyway?

Re:why?

[Vahokif]

It's because a major selling point of their calculators is that you can use them in exams. If you can hack them to cheat, they won't be allowed any more.

Re:why?

[Peach Rings]

If you're going to allow calculators at all, graphing calculators are definitely the best option. My TI-89 has scrollback, symbolic computation (I would die without free variables), pretty printing, copy and paste, and algebraic factoring/expansion.

Unless you're in 7th grade or something, all of those make it much easier to focus on the real problem rather than getting caught up in the algebra.

Re:why?

[betterunixthanunix]

If "getting caught up in the algebra" is a problem, then you need all the practice you can get. There is nothing wrong with being required to work out the algebra in a math course, and in high school physics and chemistry courses, it is rare for the algebra to go beyond basic quadratic equations or systems of linear equations, neither of which takes a terribly long time to work out.

Re:why?

[TejWC]

Actually, a friend of mine came up with a genius idea: write a TI-83 emulator on his TI-83.

What he did was make it look like his calculator was not running any program (just showing the main screen) when in fact it is running a program: his emulator. The teacher could test out with a simple math calculation while under the emulator and it would work just fine. However, when the teacher tries to delete any of the programs he had or try to reset all the data, it would do so only for the emulator, not for the real TI-83 data.

So, right before giving his calculator to the teacher before the exam, he would run his emulator. The teacher would clear the memory of the emulator, but then he would then exit out of the emulator and have all of his real programs intact.

Re:why?

[h3nning]

10 years ago when I was at a university they also said that they would reset to factory defaults, this never ever happened, though. Probably because senior citizens are hired to supervise exams here in Norway.

Also, even if they did, the calculator I had could store data and programs in flash, which wouldn't be affected by a factory reset.

The only way a factory reset would have affected me was that I would have had to turn RPN back on.

Re:why?

[noidentity]

Awesome story. Reminds me of the Apple IIs in school where we'd make a short BASIC program that did its own command prompt, but gave you confusing responses. Great hilarity.

Re:why?

[Joce640k]

They also make the same calculators in versions which are open and programmable so this is just stupid. All you'll end up doing is getting them banned from exams and then you won't want to own one so you just shot yourself in the foot.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

yo dawg! we heard you like to calculate things while your on your calculator! so we put a calculator in your calculator!

so you can calculate.....

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only would this fix the DRM issue, it would also be more profitable for TI since they would sell 100 extra calculators per school.

Re:why?

[Brett Buck]

If you are going to put that kind of thought into cheating on a test, wouldn't you be better served actually learning the material?

Re:why?

[tclgeek]

I'm sure glad I went to school in the 80's where I could choose to use my RPN calculator. If I was forced to use a TI it would have taken me twice as long to finish a test.

Re:why?

[_133MHz]

IMO if you're putting that kind of work just to cheat on a test, you're already learning a lot of things (programming and/or electronics in case of hardware hacks), things that are arguably worth much more for your personal development than whatever the particular test might cover.

Re:why?

[slater.jay]

In high school I took AP physics. The exams came with a sheet of handy unit conversions. I had a program that did the exact same thing on my calculator, except that it eliminated the occasional error I'd make if I had to do the conversions by hand. You can do a lot of things with calculator programs that get you closer to the actual problem instead of the busywork around it.

Of course, you can also do a lot of things with calculator programs that give you answers to the problems.

Re:why?

[Nemyst]

I'm not an American, so my education system is different, but I can tell you that having to solve a 4 or 5 equations system using a matrix is the best way to make a stupid calculation mistake that can drastically alter the answer you get. Yes, I can add and subtract, but when you have to do it 20, 30 times, a mistake can slip in.

It only gets worse when you encounter large integrals with trigonometrical substitutions or integration by parts. For all of those, graphing calculators are a veritable life saver.

Re:why?

[vonwilkenstein]

A genius idea for cheating. While he is being applauded for his "ingenuity, or cleverness", the fact still remains that if he used this modified calculator with prohibited software to take a test, he cheated.

It is reasonable to assume that if he can write emulation software to cheat, he has the ability to learn the material in the first place.

Then we wonder why this shows up on /.: What's Wrong With the American University System... , and US industries are loaded with idiotic and inept leadership.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me crazy, but the simplest solution is to have the students do their own math....on paper with a pen or pencil. There is no need for a math test to require a calculator. There's no reason than sqr(3)/2 needs to be reduced to a decimal form. True, it might be harder for a teacher to write an exam crafted in such a way that the student's understanding of the material is demonstrated in the steps they write down to get to the solution rather than just checking that the final numerical answer matches the key, but I think that's not beyond the typical math teacher's capacities.

Re:why?

[sjames]

TI SHOULD include a backup copy of the firmware and a means for proctors to make sure that it is running when the calculator is in "test mode". They tried the DRM route and get defeated time and again. Perhaps it's time to try COOPERATING with people. Very few (if any) of the people hacking the TI are doing it in order to cheat on a test and most would probably be sympathetic to anti-cheating measures if TI would quit giving them the finger.

For example, how about just locking the bootloader and in test mode it will only boot factory firmware (and erase anything else), but in free mode it will boot anything you want? They could have avoided a lot of trouble just by making an effort not to be buttheads.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a friend of mine came up with a genius idea: write a TI-83 emulator on his TI-83.

A friend of mine had a similar program. His also reset the PRNG (by changing the stored seed). This is because our instructor realized all reset TI-83+ calculators gave the same answer to the rand command after being reset. Therefore she would test the what number the PRNG produced. This was the first time I saw the equivalent of the DRM arms race and how it screwed over people who were innocent, what with their other model and brand calculators giving different random numbers.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo. When I taught algebra in college, my students would whine about calculators not being allowed on exams. I replied, "I will allow them. Of course, then I will design a test that requires the use of a calculator." That shut them up.

Re:why?

[BrokenHalo]

I'm sure glad I went to school in the 80's where I could choose to use my RPN calculator. If I was forced to use a TI it would have taken me twice as long to finish a test.

I only wish I could agree. I used to have an HP48G+, and I loved the nice clicky keys, the big fat "enter" button exactly where my index finger would fall, and of course RPN.

Trouble was, the damn thing kept throwing spack-attacks at inopportune moments. It was impossible to let anyone else touch it, since they would inevitably crash the machine. As my undergraduate course involved lots (and lots) of assessment, the unreliability issue got to be a problem, and the HP machine had to go.

I replaced it with a TI-89 which is much faster, and among other things, does symbolic calculus nicely. On the downside, the keypad is nowhere near as good as the HP48's.

Some people make an issue of the number of keystrokes used with RPN vs TI's algebraic system, but I personally think that's a load of horseshit. While I still like RPN, since the processes we use on the machine essentially mimic human thought processes, the difference in number of keystrokes used over the course of a given calculation is negligible. Hopefully most of us would spend more time bashing our brains than bashing keys.

Re:why?

[Rob the Bold]

They also make the same calculators in versions which are open and programmable so this is just stupid. All you'll end up doing is getting them banned from exams and then you won't want to own one so you just shot yourself in the foot.

You'd probably be shooting future students in the foot, so it's not nearly as bad an idea as you make it out to be. You could argue that this is also a bad idea, but we trash or risk trashing the future in so many other more serious ways this is pretty small potatoes.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reply to this, as devil's advocate, is why not use the tools available?

Re:why?

[FatLittleMonkey]

True, it might be harder for a teacher to write an exam crafted in such a way that the student's understanding of the material is demonstrated in the steps they write down to get to the solution rather than just checking that the final numerical answer matches the key, but I think that's not beyond the typical math teacher's capacities.

"Answer keys"? When I did maths & physics exams, we were always told the method was more important than the answer. Always show your workings, that way if you make a stupid mistake, you lose 1 point but not the entire 10 points for the question.

When did they stop doing that?

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh - did the same thing in high school with the Apple II Pascal dev environment, Would allow users to save and edit code, but would produce silly compiler errors, or ask for a glass of water...

Ah, the good 'ole days...

Re:why?

[betterunixthanunix]

You are obviously unfamiliar with the problems that face the American education system. Integration by parts? Substitution problems? People are graduating high school without ever having seen calculus. A system of 5 linear equations is tedious to work out, sure...but where I grew up (New York City), less than 40% of the students at many high schools were able to pass a test on basic linear equations (one at a time, not systems), where "passing" was defined as "at least 55% of the answers correct."

This may shock you, but most of what you described is considered "college level material" in the USA.

Re:why?

[firewrought]

If he used this modified calculator with prohibited software to take a test, he cheated.

Only the prohibited software gives a non-trivial performance advantage for taking the test, and he used it for such purposes. I suspect many who are capable of doing such a hack are just interested in preserving the programs they've written. (Then again, I guess USB cords are ubiquitious these days, unlike the older models where you had to buy a kit.)

Re:why?

[WhatsAProGingrass]

If someone is good enough to write the emulator on a calculater and pull that off. He really doesn't have to cheat in the first place. He is proablly leaps and bounds ahead of his classes anyways.

Re:why?

[TangoMargarine]

Good point: If you can't do it on a TI-83 (non-plus), chances are it's complicated enough that you really shouldn't be using a calculator to do it in the first place because you'll need to know how to do it yourself farther down the line. And since the original 83's don't have a user archive, they should be easier to clear. Of course, you can't buy them anymore... :-/

Re:why?

[TangoMargarine]

You could probably figure out what seed value a RAM reset produces and set it to that just before she checks...

Re:why?

[Paracelcus]

When I was in high school (geezer stuff to follow) we didn't have calculators, if you wanted to cheat you had to use crib notes (palm of the hand, shirt tail, etc), maybe it would be better to put down the cell phone and actually learn something.

Listening to rap/hiphop has to have serious negative side effects! ..Pantfs on de groumd, Pantfs on de groumd, lookin lahk uh foo wif yo pantfs on de groumd..

Re:why?

[FluffyArmada]

I believe this is exactly what the ti-nspire does.

Re:why?

[FluffyArmada]

Sorry to reply to myself... but to clarify, it basically lets you choose to boot from a special test-mode setup and a normal-use setup. And there's some extra little bits to control various things in the test-mode setup... you can enable/disable certain commands, a little LED lights up to show you're in test-mode, etc. It's nifty.

Re:why?

[sjames]

Sure, it has a test mode, but it doesn't do the other parts: That is, just locking the bootloader and let you run whatever OS you want when not in test mode.

Re:why?

[FluffyArmada]

I'm sorry, I was responding to the first part of your post, not the second. I should have been more specific.

Re:why?

[flightmaker]

(calculators tend to work for very extended times).

I'll second that statement. Only yesterday I was doing some calculations on my TI SR-50A. Obviously it was too well made.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

umm, solve this system by hand and give the results as magnitudeangle:

(6+j4)x + j5y + 8z + 2 - j8 = 0
(3+j2)y + z = 0
y + z - 4 + j6 = 0

Re:why?

[jonwil]

A better solution would be to design the tests such that no matter how many programs you have on your calculator, you still need to actually understand the math in order to figure out the right buttons to press.
Having done various levels of math over the years, I see no reason it cant be done.

Re:why?

[sydneyfong]

Here in Hong Kong we don't allow graphing calculators. We have things like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_fx-3650P

We are free to program whatever we want into the calculator, but honestly, it really doesn't help much. In fact, for most of the time the calculator is left alone when I take my exams. The "general" mathematics course is easy enough to be done with the assistance of a few very simple calculators (notably, the trigonometry functions), and the "advanced mathematics" is (to me) so hard that even if I had a full fledged computer in front of me it wouldn't help much.

Our curriculum is rather algebra heavy though.

Re:why?

[Billly Gates]

Things have changed with no child left behind.

If you can't pass algebra II you do not get your HS diploma. In algebra II (the lowest) you need to know quadratics and matrices. Heck I saw a quadratic on standardized tests for 8th graders! That shocked me as I didn't learn them until much later. Some states wont let you get your HS diploma until you pass Precalc as well.

The articles you read about kids failing these tests is because we set the bar higher today. Not that kids are becoming dumber. This was truly needed for Americans to catch up to Europeans.

Calculus AP 1 and Precalc are common now so these calculators would be required for tests if the teacher truly wanted to see if students understood how to alter functions and use them properly visually.

Re:why?

[Billly Gates]

Dos was fun as you can write a program to resemble a Novell Netware login. From there it would ask for a username and password and would store it on a txt file on the disk. Then the problem would exit and the real novell netware login appeared.

Come back a few days later and you have numerous usernames and passwords from all the students. Those were the days.

Too bad with Windows NT 4 and later you had to control alt delete to login. Obviously Microsoft saw this method.

Re:why?

[dissy]

If you are going to put that kind of thought into cheating on a test, wouldn't you be better served actually learning the material?

Because obviously someone that was able to write a working TI emulator has NO understanding of the material at hand that would be required for writing such an emulator! ;}

If he didn't understand the material at hand, his emulator wouldn't return the correct answers anyway, so what is the problem with using the answers from it? Those answers would be a pretty accurate representation of exactly his current level of understanding.

I'm not advocating cheating for the masses, as obviously most people are no where near that level and DO need to learn this stuff.
The people either writing, or just taking, this type of software and selling it to idiots so they can remain idiots are doing nothing but harming those students and the future of our country as a whole. I have nothing but spite for those people.

The ones just doing it for themselves however are the ones with the true hacker spirit, and should be more than 100% encouraged!

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The high school I went to had 2000+ students. The distribution across grade levels was not consistent either, with freshmen composting of 900 students, and seniors 400 students. Assuming you want a safety buffer of "extra" calculators for testing in case some of the main ones break (accidental or intentional), you are looking at 1,000 calculators needed minimum.

1,000*$100 each (assume a nice bulk discount) = $1,000,000 per high school. Please remit invoice to taxpayers per high school ... $30M total cost. I can put that same money to a lot better use than having a piece of technology that is "idle" 80% of the time.

This whole discussion centers around using technology (DRM) to solve what is essentially a cultural/non-technology issue (cheating). Bad idea, and as another posted stated, this is about TI trying to keep market share, nothing more.

Re:why?

[GarryFre]

Don't computers give confusing responses already? ;D

at the end of the day:

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

The be all and end all reason that TI want's to prevent people from installing software on these calc's is the modern education system.

If you install something a school would consider "cheating" on your calculator, you'll get suspended. the modern system want's to forgo the checking of these devices, (as they rarely have the technical ability to even understand how they work)

it's always a money grab. though I understand the desire to have a common platform, I also think people should be able to modify their calculators as much as they want.

if people CAN cheat at a test, there's something wrong with the testing method. change your test, don't punish people for outsmarting the education system!

Re:at the end of the day:

[hughperkins]

> if people CAN cheat at a test, there's something wrong with the testing method. change your test, don't punish people for outsmarting the education system!

That might have been true in the days before google, and vworker.com, but nowadays the answers to common and uncommon questions are a quick search away, and getting other people to answer a question for you is not so hard either, which is not quite relevant for a programmable calculator per se, but directly relevant to the assertion that it is possible to create tests that can't be cheated on.

Re:at the end of the day:

[Anonymous Coward]

True... Instead of programming on the calculator you could just hide the answers to the test in the programs themselves though // the answer to number 3 is pi r squared

Re:at the end of the day:

[betterunixthanunix]

the answers to common and uncommon questions are a quick search away

If you are asking the same question year after year, then sure, that is a problem. The solution is as clear as day: ask different questions on each exam. If a student looks up the answers to previous exams on Google, and from that is able to answer new questions...then what is the problem, exactly? The student learned how to solve the problems they are expected to be able to solve, which seems like a victory for education.

As for calculators, they should not be allowed on exams at all, or in classrooms. Math is not about pushing buttons, and if every math problem (even in physics and chemistry) a student encountered required them to find a solution without the assistance of a calculator, we would not have to water down math exams just to ensure that more than 50% of the students pass (maybe I am being a bit optimistic about the extra practice...).

Re:at the end of the day:

[Ash Vince]

As for calculators, they should not be allowed on exams at all, or in classrooms. Math is not about pushing buttons, and if every math problem (even in physics and chemistry) a student encountered required them to find a solution without the assistance of a calculator, we would not have to water down math exams just to ensure that more than 50% of the students pass (maybe I am being a bit optimistic about the extra practice...).

You are obviously to young to know that engineers have always used calculators. Before these new fangled electronic things people used slide rules, they could do almosy as much as a modern calculator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule

Re:at the end of the day:

[Peach Rings]

The student learned how to solve the problems they are expected to be able to solve, which seems like a victory for education.

Except in 1 or 2 years they'll be completely lost. How do you think someone who googled all the answers to their algebra 1 homework and tests will do in algebra 2 or precalc? Or in life?

As for calculators, they should not be allowed on exams at all, or in classrooms. Math is not about pushing buttons

The important parts of math are abstract, not computational. It's a good thing to get rid of the tedious computation that you mastered back in 3rd grade. Removing calculators would be an artificial barrier to learning, like making students scan through paper volumes of trig tables.

Re:at the end of the day:

[betterunixthanunix]

I was not thinking of engineers, to be honest. I was thinking of high school students, since high school is where I saw the overwhelming majority of graphing calculators being used.

Re:at the end of the day:

[TheLink]

How about TI design the calculator to allow people to install software, but have a hardware button to reset everything- e.g. overwite the entire flash with an original ROM? I think Gigabyte motherboards have a "dual BIOS" thing which does that. You want to bring your calculator in, too bad it gets reset to the old original ROM.

Then kids who can figure out how to mod the calculator and still cheat in exams probably would do OK anyway.

> if people CAN cheat at a test, there's something wrong with the testing method.

Just because the "Mission Impossible" sort of people can cheat in your highschool's test doesn't mean there's something wrong with the test.

Re:at the end of the day:

[betterunixthanunix]

The important parts of math are abstract, not computational. It's a good thing to get rid of the tedious computation that you mastered back in 3rd grade. Removing calculators would be an artificial barrier to learning, like making students scan through paper volumes of trig tables.

Except that students are unable to do basic arithmetic these days. It is fine for an engineering undergrad to use a calculator to save some time, but when people are graduating high school and cannot multiply two numbers, there is a very serious problem. Yes, math is abstract, but the ability to compute a result still matters -- when I was a teenager working in an ice cream store, people would sometimes give me some change after I had entered everything into the cash register, and so I was forced to quickly do some arithmetic...and many of the kids working with me could not even handle that. Now I am in grad school, and I still find myself having to do basic arithmetic -- the research I am doing is almost entirely abstract math (cryptography), but when I am standing next to a whiteboard trying to explain something, I sometimes have a need to do some multiplication.

Considering that a high school in the neighborhood where I grew up had the dubious honor of less than 40% of its students being able to pass a basic one-variable algebra exam, there is no excuse for giving the students less practice working out problems without calculators. It would be better if they were able to at least understand the most basic math and not run to a calculator than if they were unable to do any math and need a calculator just to subtract some numbers.

Re:at the end of the day:

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

How about TI design the calculator to allow people to install software, but have a hardware button to reset everything- e.g. overwite the entire flash with an original ROM? I think Gigabyte motherboards have a "dual BIOS" thing which does that. You want to bring your calculator in, too bad it gets reset to the old original ROM.

that breaks upgradability. if you put a ROM into the calc's with a base firmware, and a problem with that firmware ever pops up, you'll have to replace/recall all those units. whereas FLASH is upgradeable, and you can just send fixes to people.

Just because the "Mission Impossible" sort of people can cheat in your highschool's test doesn't mean there's something wrong with the test.

there shouldn't be a test with questions that can be "Mission Impossible"'d.
A test should NEVER be multiple choice. the only reason multiple choice tests exist these days is to speed the grading, and allow our over populated schools deal with the larger number of students without having to increase staff count. (as always, it goes back to not enough money in the education system)

The way I see it, there's no way to cheat at a real test, ever. if you can go about answering the question by finding the answer somewhere else in the same amount (or less) time that it took the other students to derive the same answer, they've still learned something. it should take understanding of the question to know how to find the reference to the answer somewhere. (which is more than alright: I'd never expect a person to be able to derive me the one millionth point in a Mandelbrot Set by hand. but if they know enough to find me the answer, they're alright in my books.)

whereas a shitty multiple choice test only requires you to know what of the four options the answer is, without even reading the question. there's no learning in multiple choice tests. even smart kids will often default to "the answer is always 'C'" logic from time to time, it's just a fact of life that nobody does everything right ALL THE TIME.

Re:at the end of the day:

[noidentity]

Being able to do mental arithmetic is a practical skill like any other. If you don't have a use for it, it doesn't matter that you have forgotten how. I've forgotten how to do long division, but I've had very little need to do so. Even when implementing long division on an 8-bit micro, the binary nature gives it a somewhat different character. I can be the most effective by using the tools around me to automate things, leaving me to do the things that cannot be automated.

Re:at the end of the day:

[Hatta]

Slide rules at least require a little knowledge to work. If you can use a slide rule, you understand the logarithm rules pretty well (even if they haven't been taught to you as such yet). Honestly, we'd be a lot better off requiring slide rule use instead of calculator use. Learning slide rules teaches basic concepts. Logarithms, significant figures, etc. The accuracy is good enough for pretty much any high school or college course. And you *can't* cheat with a slide rule.

Re:at the end of the day:

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

if people CAN cheat at a test, there's something wrong with the testing method. change your test, don't punish people for outsmarting the education system!

What utter crap. If a student decides to cheat, it's nothing but his own damn fault. He can learn, if nothing else, to exercise a little bit of self-discipline, instead of using the system as a scapegoat. They know the rules, and they choose to break them. If they have an issue with the system, they complain about it before they're sitting in front of the paper, or if it's too late, they should deal with the consequences of their laziness themselves.

It's a funny way of looking at cheating, to call it "outsmarting the system". Most cheats exploit faults known to both administrators and students, and exploiting them is hardly an exercise in either intelligence or even creativity. It's like stealing candy from a candy honesty box.

Re:at the end of the day:

[ducomputergeek]

It's not the education system as much as the standardized testing system. Well, unless things have changed in the past 15 years.

Re:at the end of the day:

[TheLink]

>that breaks upgradability.

How so? The Dual BIOS Gigabyte motherboards are certainly upgradeable. In fact one of the benefits of the Gigabyte dual BIOS was that you can more easily recover if your upgrade goes wrong - you can fall back to the original/backup ROM and start the whole upgrade again.

> The way I see it, there's no way to cheat at a real test,

Can you give an example of a real test where cheating is not possible? Even the Mission Impossible people can cheat in an essay test. Or a CCIE test.

With sufficient resources and preparation time you can cheat in most tests. Assuming they don't strip naked, MRI all test candidates, and put each in their own sealed Faraday cage for the test.

Even then you may have difficulty ensuring that the person sitting for the test is actually the person who's supposed to get the certs/grades. After all people have also been known to pay others to sit for some tests.

Re:at the end of the day:

[mpe]

The be all and end all reason that TI want's to prevent people from installing software on these calc's is the modern education system.

The solution is actually quite simple. Issue a standard calculator (most likely a fairly basic model) with the test paper.

Re:at the end of the day:

[sensei moreh]

I wonder, was there a rule that said you could only use a slide rule with C,D,A,B, and the log scale (I forget its designation)? I had a slide rule with 20 scales - much easier to deal with logarithms. Don't ever recall being told I couldn't use it on an exam. On the other hand, maybe I've become forgetful in my old age.

Re:at the end of the day:

[ozbird]

If you can "install" something, it's not a calculator - it's a computer. Using a computer in a maths exam is cheating - "technical ability" of the examiners doesn't enter into it. Simple checks like "8 segment display, pass; dot matrix display, fail" weed out most forms of cheating - or they did back in my day. If "calculators" need a "factory reset" before exams, the cheaters have already won... (Before you ask, the slide rule/log table vs. calculator battle was before my time - but I understand where they were coming from.)

Re:at the end of the day:

[misexistentialist]

Sounds like registers need to be programmed properly and "smart" whiteboards installed. There probably is still value in developing mathematical intuition, but even more basic life skills like killing or navigation have long since been abandoned.

Re:at the end of the day:

[sjames]

If it only checks signatures on the backup flash, the hackers probably wouldn't have bothered trying to defeat it. They'd be too busy enjoying reprogramming the calculator's working flash. That wouldn't make cheating impossible, but as TFA shows, it isn't impossible now. It would have greatly reduced interest in defeating the anti-cheating mechanism.

Re:at the end of the day:

[Trinn]

There is a big difference between arithmetic and mathematics. Algebra, calculus, etc. do not require any significant ability to do rote arithmetic, they are logical symbolic manipulation systems. I've personally never gotten the hang of rote arithmetic despite a lot of people trying (ok, sure, I understand *how* arithmetic works, but that's not what I'm talking about), but despite this, I went on to do quite well in algebra and calculus courses, and still feel fairly capable in those subjects. Arithmetic is something for machines to do, it requires no higher function really, no great insight. Describing the system of arithmetic is a more complex thing of course, but learning/remembering that 7*13 is 91 is not exactly all that important in the real world, especially if you've learned *how* to work it out, given pen&paper. Once people can be shown to understand what arithmetic means, its kinda silly to require them to not use tools.

On the other hand, I'm iffy as to computational solvers, the symbolic manipulation systems as found in devices like the ti-92, again I think they should only be introduced once the basics are *understood*, and I think a decent test could still be designed that they would be little use for. Same with things like formula cards, especially for the things that it is rather silly to expect every student to re-derive every time. Using the card on the test will show whether they actually understand the logical system underneath it, and will serve as good practice with the formulas. Of course formula cards and formula teaching is a double-edged sword, my sister struggled seriously with algebra because she was taught in an approach that did not explain *why* anything worked, just that you used a given formula for a given class of problems, which teaches you nothing.

Re:at the end of the day:

[winwar]

"Except that students are unable to do basic arithmetic these days."

Citation needed. In any case, one hardly needs to do basic arithmetic these days.

"Yes, math is abstract, but the ability to compute a result still matters -- when I was a teenager working in an ice cream store, people would sometimes give me some change after I had entered everything into the cash register, and so I was forced to quickly do some arithmetic...and many of the kids working with me could not even handle that."

So what? That was true when I was a teenager too. Back when calculators where just being introduced. And everyone learned multiplication tables and basic arithmetic. Everything was not better in the "good old days".

"It would be better if they were able to at least understand the most basic math and not run to a calculator than if they were unable to do any math and need a calculator just to subtract some numbers."

You are confusing the ability to do arithmetic with the ability to understand math concepts or do math. They are not the same thing. If they were, I would have been a math major. Sure, I wish everyone knew their multiplication tables or could do arithmetic in their head. But that is just because I learned it and found it useful-I mean why just learn up to 12 times 12? It's completely arbitrary. It is hardly an indication of math competence or skill.

Re:at the end of the day:

[Anonymous Coward]

And you *can't* cheat with a slide rule.

Sure you can. Just find a copy of the test answers and write them on the underside of the slide!

Re:at the end of the day:

[Anonymous Coward]

you don't need a calculator to test math skills though. Its called show your work and grade on the work done, not on some number that you get at the end. Good math test questions require having the student show they know how to solve the problem, and good physics tests questions require the student show they know how to use the equations to get to the answer.

Re:at the end of the day:

[betterunixthanunix]

Do you think that the rules of arithmetic come out of nowhere? Everything from basic add-and-carry techniques to square root algorithms can be derived in abstract math. Some of those techniques are actually very important -- the long division algorithm, for example, is used to prove significant results in number theory, and algorithms based on it (like the Euclidean algorithm) are generalized and studied in depth in ring theory.

Once people can be shown to understand what arithmetic means, its kinda silly to require them to not use tools.

Unfortunately, a number of high school students do not understand arithmetic and cannot do it -- their calculators become more of a crutch than a convenience.

Re:at the end of the day:

[betterunixthanunix]

I have yet to see a "smart whiteboard" that I can both draw on using a cheap dry erase marker and that I can request calculations from. Really, the amount of time required to do some basic arithmetic on the whiteboard is a fraction of the time needed to even enter the numbers into a computer or calculator. Likewise with the cash register: the time needed to do some addition when someone randomly hands a cashier some extra change should be small if that cashier is actually capable of adding, smaller than the time needed to enter more information into the register itself.

As for hunting and navigation...well, I see nothing wrong with people knowing at least some basic techniques, even if they never actually have to use them.

Re:at the end of the day:

[Anonymous Coward]

I was never allowed a calculator at engineering college. Any math problem had to be calculated (or estimated) by hand. Why would you need a calculator - to multiply a number by pi? To divide it by the square root of 2? Get real.

Re:at the end of the day:

[Abcd1234]

Do you think that the rules of arithmetic come out of nowhere?

Of course not. But just like a carpenter doesn't need to know rigid body physics in order to frame up a wall, your average person doesn't need to know abstract algebra in order to perform basic arithmetic.

No, the GP is quite right. Math and arithmetic are very very different skillsets, when it comes right down to it. And for most, arithmetic is *far* more useful day-to-day (most people never see an algebraic equation after they graduate high school).

Re:at the end of the day:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The be all and end all reason that TI want's to prevent people from installing software on these calc's is the modern education system.

If you install something a school would consider "cheating" on your calculator, you'll get suspended. the modern system want's to forgo the checking of these devices, (as they rarely have the technical ability to even understand how they work)

So, the problems is that schools don't want to spend the money for teachers/proctors to validate that calculators used on tests don't have "cheat-sheets" on them. Seems to me the solution is for the school to own the calculators used on tests and hand them out before each test and collect them afterwards. This DRM stuff is inherently flawed precisely because the students have unlimited physical access to the calculators. So take away the physical access and you can then skip the DRM and actually get the desired results with greater confidence.

Of course this means the schools have buy their calculators - but if TI was smart they would do something like the OLPC guys did - jack the price on retail calculators and then for every calc purchased by a student, donate one to the kid's school (or actually less than one since not all of the student body will ever be taking a math test simultaneously).

Re:at the end of the day:

[ittybad]

TI's concern for cheating has nothing to do with those who can't solve one-variable algebra exams or do simple multiplication. TI is concerned with cheating (or should I say the money flow that could dry up if their calculators allowed cheating) on AP exams -- you know, the ones that give college credit to high schoolers. We are talking about AP Calculus students. They don't need the extra practice with basics, they need to do some quick (and sometimes heavy) calculations so they can get back to the "math" of the exam.

Re:at the end of the day:

[FluffyArmada]

The big things I use my calculator for are operations with matrices and trig functions.
I don't *need* my calculator to do these things... but it's either the calculator or stupid mistakes with matrices, or it's either the calculator or a big table of trig function values.
It's mostly a time saver, so that I can do more math and less arithmetic. I can do arithmetic and I can do algebra, but there's no reason why I should have to do a bunch of pointless calculation if I actually have a good understanding of what's going on.
But that said, I don't think we should require these big, fancy graphing calculators in high-school... just teach derivatives earlier instead of teaching them in a mysterious calculus class, after all the only thing these calculators are ever used for in high-school math, besides playing games, is finding the minima and maxima of functions. And matrix math... but the worst we ever did in high-school was 3x3, and you can usually write down a minimal amount of work and do the rest of those in your head. (when doing expansion by minors for example)
Otherwise, I remember a few times in an algebra class where we were tested on whether or not we could solve a system of equations by plugging coefficients into matrices in our calculators... of course, we were never taught *why* the methods worked, only how to do them on a calculator. Because most (probably all) math classes in high-school in the USA are a stupid waste of time.
It wasn't until college that I started to really think math was nifty... and this happened my first semester when my professor (unlike all of my high-school teachers) took the five minutes out of his schedule to explain Euler's identity to me. I added a math major that day.

Re:at the end of the day:

[clifyt]

"if people CAN cheat at a test, there's something wrong with the testing method. change your test, don't punish people for outsmarting the education system!"

I have grad degrees in psychology and my main focus of studies are in experiential learning and assessment of said learning.

And from a certain realistic stand point, you are right. We can't catch all the cheaters, and testing methods need to make it more fair, meaning that we need to balance things out.

That said, who the fuck has the knowledge to create system like this? I can safely say, I'm considered expendable by my university because I'm too expensive for the little work I can do. Should every instructor also be forced to take 4 years of graduate psych in order to learn how to get into students heads and figure out how to ask appropriate questions? Right now, it is near dead impossible to get teachers to ask very probing questions in the first place...but we also know that if students don't cheat -- we have a pretty good idea of what they know even with the lack of appropriateness in the testing procedures / rubric.

It is nice to claim their is a problem with the testing method, but who is going to pay for the fix? Students already complain that their schooling is costing more and more -- and a good portion of this comes from the fact that we have to go out of our ways to make things fair for those that can't follow the rules. We have to expend good monies on people because of politically correctness (some because idiot students require too much of it, some of it because idiot administrators seem to think that being forced not to be overtly biased against anyone that doesn't think like they do should be able to do so). So now you expect more. And I'm certain if you were asked if you wanted an increase in the cost of your school, you'd say no. Last year at my school, the faculty actually put out a ballot item about increasing the budget -- and said why it needed to be done, and everyone (97%) voted against it...and the same people complained that those services the budget was needed to be increased for complained that they didn't get any of this.

Re:at the end of the day:

[Anonymous Coward]

if people CAN break the law, there's something wrong with the legal system. change your laws, don't punish people for outsmarting the legal system!

Hmm.

Re:at the end of the day:

[toddestan]

that breaks upgradability. if you put a ROM into the calc's with a base firmware, and a problem with that firmware ever pops up, you'll have to replace/recall all those units. whereas FLASH is upgradeable, and you can just send fixes to people.

Well, that just means it'll be like it was in the 90's when the calculator's firmware was in ROM and they had to pretty sure it was as bug-free as possible before shipping it out the door. Even so, I know the TI-85 (the TI graphing calculator I'm most familiar with) had several ROM revisions. I don't know what the difference between all the ROMs - there are 10 known versions, but some of the earlier ones had some nasty bugs having to do with auto-poweroff sometimes kicking in when a program was running which would corrupt the memory. There were never any recalls over that. Even the last revision (which I own) still has a bug in it, though at least that one would be nearly impossible to run into accidentally, and is fun to play with once you know about it.

Re:at the end of the day:

[Radtoo]

Or maybe, we should teach kids how to do and read the programming of modern Computer Algebra Systems instead of further going into the futility of paper-based mathematics.

There is no way to do calculations faster and "better' than with a CAS. Everything is better. You can have documentation right there with the algorithm. A huge library of mathematical knowledge that can be tapped into for problem solving. Systematic verification becomes easier - besides that you don't make simple errors in calculating things, only conceptual errors.

Efficiency as well as better actual understanding instead of wasting time on exercising "perfectly" processing algorithms by hand could very much be gained. Instead of kids and even university students spending most of the time on learning how to be able to rapidly execute individual algorithms by hand or imperfectly on a CAS by drilling them until they can do that, they may be taught how to read and use algorithms and maths on a way more important, conceptual level. And way more efficiently too, given proper care you can have extremely powerful tools to investigate or visualize individual steps and partial algorithms, for instance, essentially a lot more people would even be able to understand why things work as they do, why they are correct, when and how to use them... you could to terrific bits of experimenting on parameters and such to get a real understanding of what it is that is done.

Re:at the end of the day:

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in 1 or 2 years they'll be completely lost. How do you think someone who googled all the answers to their algebra 1 homework and tests will do in algebra 2 or precalc? Or in life?

they'll google it and it will work, because they have become very good at googling things while going through high school it's a life skill should be compulsory courses on it

Obligatory xkcd

[teh31337one]

http://www.xkcd.com/768/

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[fsterman]

Yeah, and why haven't cheap Chinese clones flooded the market with $20 knockoffs? That's the REAL solution to this problem: then schools and TI will be all about owning their own hardware for standardized testing.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite. Surely Texas Instruments are about 18 months away from having their ass handed to them completely by smart phones/readers? They have better displays, more RAM, faster... you don't even need the calculators "special keys" if you have a touch screen which can have software defined buttons.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[slater.jay]

See HandyCalc for Android, for instance.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not fucking obligatory god damn it

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

That is pretty much why TI is doing what they are doing. For any sort of outside-world use, their calculators have been glaringly less powerful than full computers, with appropriate software, for years. Now that properly programmable cellphones, with nice screens and so forth(not just your basic "tip calculator" dumbphone stuff) are becoming widely available, they are in the position of being inferior for the portable stuff as well(these cellphones aren't actually cheaper, but they are a sunk cost, since you already have them, and the software that makes them act as a calculator is markedly cheaper than the TI calculator).

All this makes TI's logical business plan very, very clear: cater to the demands of schools and standardized tests. A test administrator will absolutely flip out if you tried to pull a cellphone during a test(hardly unreasonable, if you can't actually read the screen at the time, using a calculator program is pretty much indistinguishable from texting questions and answers back and forth with an outside confederate). Therefore, TI is safe from cellphones in those markets. They are similarly unthreatened by laptops, PDAs, and the like.

This is why TI has focused on cranking out overpriced, but reasonably durable, fairly basic calculators(the capabilities of their low end have barely budged, even as computers as a whole have advanced, and their high end has actually withered considerably) and on doing everything they can to establish themselves as the standard in schools and textbooks and standardized tests. They cannot win elsewhere; but anything programmable enough to replace them cannot win there.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[TangoMargarine]

Because teachers will surely let you use your iPhone on a test...

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[Anonymous Coward]

TI does not control the market for good calculators. They control the market for calculators allowed on tests, particularly the SATs and AP exams. People buy TI calculators because they are allowed on those exams. If you actually want to do computation, you just use a computer.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[Pete from NYC]

I think the xkcd cartoon is cute, especially for us techies. On a different, related matter: In 6.251 (MIT's class on operating systems, circa 1970), the professor (Donovan) had students submit the punch cards, and the program he wrote would evaluate them with "Yes" or "No". Except one of the results was "Maybe", so he gave that student an "A". The point is: sometimes cheating (we called it "hacking" back then) required more knowledge than the task at hand. I emphasize the word "sometimes", since when other people use the hacks, they may not learn anything, although they may be more productive, which I think is the point of using artifices or helpers (whether it's a slide rule from my youth in engineering, or using canned chicken broth instead of making it myself from scratch in a cooking recipe) is that often you can reach higher heights by standing upon the shoulders of others, as Newton said.

No "rights" involved.

[John Hasler]

> The battle rages on as users fight for the right to run their own software on their own hardware.

They have the right to run their own software on their own hardware. It's the knowledge of how to do so that they lacked. Now they have it.

Re:No "rights" involved.

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

it's been proposed a number of times at TI that they allow for people to do as they please with their Calculators, move the software to a Read Only removable flash card, and allow people to put their own cards into the things, then offering schools the ability to purchase the "standard firmware" flash cards for a gov't subsidized rate.

but anything that involves schools spending more money is seen as a "bad thing" by taxpayers. (who then turn around and scream that we don't spend enough money on education..)

TI is still fighting them

[betterunixthanunix]

The point is the fight, not whether or not a particular device has been cracked. TI (and to be fair, plenty of other companies) are engaged in a constant struggle to prevent users from exercising their right to run whatever software they want on their computers. You might construe it as, "Well you can still run the software, you just don't know how" but realistically speaking, the devices are being designed to thwart the user's attempt to install software without thwarting the manufacturer. That is a strike against us and our rights, regardless of how you phrase it.

Re:TI is still fighting them

[Gnavpot]

The point is the fight, not whether or not a particular device has been cracked. TI (and to be fair, plenty of other companies) are engaged in a constant struggle to prevent users from exercising their right to run whatever software they want on their computers. You might construe it as, "Well you can still run the software, you just don't know how" but realistically speaking, the devices are being designed to thwart the user's attempt to install software without thwarting the manufacturer. That is a strike against us and our rights, regardless of how you phrase it.

I will try rephrase the grandparent's statement to make it more clear to you:

Fighting to crack a certain device is not fighting for a right - it is fighting to be able to excercise the right you already had.

Cracking the device does not give you more or less rights than you had before cracking it. If you want to change the rights, you have to influence the legislators.

Re:TI is still fighting them

[Gnavpot]

And once again I fail at using quote tags.

Re:TI is still fighting them

[maxwell demon]

And once again I fail at using quote tags.

If you are going to quote the full parent in one block anyway, why are you not just using the "Quote Parent" button? It's both easier and less error prone.

Re:TI is still fighting them

[John Hasler]

> ...the devices are being designed to thwart the user's attempt to install
> software without thwarting the manufacturer.

And the users are knowingly buying the devices.

> That is a strike against us and our rights, regardless of how you phrase it.

It has nothing to do with your rights. The fact is that 99+% of the users don't give a damn about installing software. They just want to use the things. If it doesn't do what you want don't buy it.

Re:TI is still fighting them

[noidentity]

Wow, never knew such a "Quote Parent" button existed in the full interface. I use the simplified one, due to what OS/browser I have access to, so I don't see that. Nice to know, anyway.

Re:TI is still fighting them

[BitZtream]

The devices are designed so that teachers know whats own them and can easily prevent you from bringing 'cheats' into a test.

Its not about controlling what you do with your calculator you selfish fuck, the world doesn't revolve around YOU.

Its about using the calculators being a 'controlled environment' so to speak so they can be allowed into tests without allowing students to take advantage of it to the point of cheating the test.

The point is that it allows teachers a way to test that students know how to get the job done and know the steps involved rather than they can do the basic math of the problem.

TI isn't trying to sell you a calculator you can use as a GP device, TI is trying to sell you a calculator you're still allowed to use on tests, and your dumb ass keeps trying to break it so they take away the TI and tell you to bring a slide rule.

TI really is doing you a favor in their attempts, even if you're too dense to get it.

If so many people want a TI like calc for some other purpose it would seem to me that someone would create such a device.

You cry 'its our hardware we bought it' and TI, the teachers and myself hear 'stop making it so we can't cheat you assholes'.

Re:TI is still fighting them

[Anonymous Coward]

It has nothing to do with your rights.

It has everything to do with rights. It's about ownership, the core of the capitalist/freemarket system.

The fact is that 99+% of the users don't give a damn about installing software.

Irrelevant. Some do.

Re:TI is still fighting them

[Gnavpot]

If you are going to quote the full parent in one block anyway, why are you not just using the "Quote Parent" button? It's both easier and less error prone.

Because the two only buttons in the interface I am using, are Preview and Submit. But I could use the Preview button more than I do...

Niche market

[zogger]

Looks to me like a potential good enough niche market for some startup (or a cooperative) to build and sell a really open calculator. And I would guess said designers and builders could come from within that same community, ie, engineers/students/scientists who are already using these high end calculators. That pool of people has the necessary skillset taken as a whole. Electronic pocket calculators have been around a long time, the basic design must be well understood by now. And it seems like if you weren't trying to keep it locked down, the design would be simpler by some not insignificant degree.

Re:Niche market

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty clear, schools and testing organizations say which calculators can be used on standardized tests,, if it can be programmed it will not be allowed in the room. So if TI wants a calculator in this segement of the market it must be effectivly locked.
Now it is a separate issue as to how screwed up the education segement is.. but that is a separate argument.

Re:Niche market

[westlake]

Looks to me like a potential good enough niche market for some startup (or a cooperative) to build and sell a really open calculator.

But when your kid - and ten million others - enters the middle grades you will have to buy him that locked-down TI for his class work.

Do you really think you can match TI's economies of scale in production?

Where do you sell your "open" calculator?"

Not at Walmart, certainly. Not in any store which wants a slice of the back-to-school market. You aren't worth the shelf space.

Government

[DaMattster]

Given the recent legal victory that makes jailbreaking iPhones neither a criminal nor tort act, I'd say TI is being awfully brazen. I think this needs to be brought up in front of the same commission that reached said ruling. Unfortunately, TI has a monopoly in the graphing/programmable calculator area and I fear that they might throw patent-litigation threats in the face of anyone trying build a competitive, open-source equivalent.

Re:Government

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

the issue there is that the Iphone is not targeted at a market that won't allow upgradability.

the TI's are designed as "standard instruments" that schools are expected to know how they work, what they can do, and what they are allowed for. if you bring an iphone to your SAT, and spend half the exam texting people for answers, they're going to throw out your test. (even though in my opinion there's very little wrong with that.) where as you bringing your TI-83 to a math exam is.. almost expected.

TI Should really let them be hacked

[flipper9]

What if the kids did hack their calculators, install inappropriate notes, and cheat on their exams? It would be inconvenient for the teachers to reflash/reformat/reset each calculator, and be sure that the student wasn't still cheating. The teacher's only solution would be to purchase additional TI calculators for exam purposes only. A win-win for TI!

Re:TI Should really let them be hacked

[betterunixthanunix]

The teacher's only solution would be to purchase additional TI calculators

Or they might wake up and realize that graphing calculators do not solve any educational goals. Then TI would be screwed, as teachers began requiring their students to actually understand math instead of just understanding how to push buttons.

Re:TI Should really let them be hacked

[flipper9]

Agreed. I can see the usefulness of a basic calculator for math and simple operations, which can be found in extremely cheap china versions for less than $1 each. One solution my professors had for the complicated calculations problems on exams was to make the math extremely easy, as what they were testing was your ability to do the calculation, not whether you could calculate 1.84523*32.344/422.33... so they'd make it into a problem where the math was more like 2*6/4.

Re:TI Should really let them be hacked

[cherry-blossom]

Yep- How many students get through calculus in high school using a calculator only to get screwed in college calculus when they can't use one.

Re:TI Should really let them be hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have never learned to program without my ti-83, and I learned a lot by compulsively graphing every different type of equation possible--sin, quadratic, linear, and various combinations. Granted, all of this was done in my free time to satisfy my own curiosity, and not as a part of my school work.

Re:TI Should really let them be hacked

[Spazntwich]

I agree.

Also, I think it's about time we removed those damn cheating compilers from programming classes. Let students actually understand assembler instead of just understanding how to push keys.

Re:TI Should really let them be hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

I used a fancy ~$120 ti graphing calculator in high school for calculus. I did terrible.

I used a less fancy ti calculator that I got for like $15 in college. I did quite a lot better.

I don't know if I'm just old, but I never did enjoy messing around with graphing calculators for math. It might be great for learning BASIC and so on, but for mathematics, get me a normal calculator with just numbers. Or possibly an abacus for simpler stuff. Always did like using an abacus.

Ahh TI calculators

[areusche]

I had the best time using my TI-84 on tests and the SATs. I had several physics and math programs that made completing pointless busy work so much faster along with showing the formulas most of the time! My favorite program was this "Fake Clear" program that would trap the "Memory Reset" function and allow for a user to use the wipe function without deleting any programs after typing in a set of numbers to unlock it.

Was it cheating? Did I do something unethical?

I don't know, nor do I care. I could recreate my steps and completely understood the math behind it.

I've been out of school for so long now and frankly I hope that these hackers give the fat finger to TI and the College Board. I have nothing but disdain for those two organizations

Re:Ahh TI calculators

[PRMan]

You can use calculators on the SAT? Since when? My favorite trick was using the black marks on the side of the Scantron page to measure the graphs. Because if they didn't say Not To Scale, they were.

Now get off my lawn!

Re:Ahh TI calculators

[BitZtream]

You using the program you wrote isn't the problem.

You selling it to Sally and Sam so they can use it on the test is the problem.

Re:Ahh TI calculators

[WhatsAProGingrass]

I missed about a month of multivarialbe calculus and showed up the day of the test without knowing ANYTHING. My 3 friends were studying there butts off and I said screw it, i'm programming everything in my calculator (89). I spent 4 hours hand typing all the things i would need. Step by step it would output the equations I needed. My friends thought I was crazy. I learned a lot about the test just from typing all that crap in. Well, I got a 100 on that test. Me and my friends always look back on that day and laugh.

Re:Ahh TI calculators

[Anonymous Coward]

The SAT II subject tests in certain subjects allow calculators. And yes, you could use at least a basic calculator with the move from the SAT to the SAT (aptitude to assessment) in 1994. Which happened to be the year I took the test. So you are obviously old, but not necessarily that old.

Most of the people on here with their elaborate methods for cheating are either *making shit up* or they are not; and if it is the latter, some of these methods such as using a microcontroller to reload a calculator would demonstrate a level of cleverness and technical proficiency where these people cheating on a high school math test is very well down on my list of Things That Are Wrong With Society.

If the tests in question are circumvented this easily, they obviously weren't that good, and the people cheating on them are either 1) affluent enough that they will be able to adjust into upper class society irrespective of their high school bullshit 2) so at risk that it still won't make any difference due to other problems that are the real issue. I had to take Multidimensional Calc in college, since I had taken AP Calc BC exam in high school, and there was no calculator nonsense, because their were no calculators, and it didn't matter because the tests emphasized the subject material and not arithmetic drilling (which is fine for the 3rd grade).

Fuck the College Board and ETS, and fuck the asswipes in education administration (at all levels). It is ironic that the only good thing I got out of my college program were the economics courses where I learned exactly why the education industry is a maddening mess.

Re:Ahh TI calculators

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I got a 100 on that test. Me and my friends always look back on that day and laugh.

And everyone else worked for months and got less than that.

You must have correctly answered the two extra credit questions that got cut off by the photocopier.

It was fortunate that the teachers giving the test were so much stupider than you that they didn't think that was strange...

Re:Ahh TI calculators

[areusche]

I took the college required SAT test in 2003. On that test I was allowed to use a TI84 (and all of is variants). The TI86 onwards was not allowed. My problem with mathematics is that I take my time and not rush things. I always fudge up formulas along the way.

The math section is a speed test to determine who can do it the fastest. I had a factoring program I downloaded from TI-Calc.org that let me factor polynomials in roughly 10 seconds. Factoring by hand takes me so much longer.

So really I wasn't making this up. But in the end my score on the test wasn't very good so if using the program kept me from looking like an even bigger idiot to college admissions panel than so be it. I'm happily employed (with health insurance/pension) and doing very well regardless of what this stupid test tried to show./p

Not to Diminish the Achievement...

[Greyfox]

But why put the effort into making a piece of hardware better when the manufacturer clearly doesn't want you doing that? Why not start a project to create your dream calculator on a more open platform? If you went with Android or Iphone, that would be one less device you have to carry around and you could install it on one of the pads for the platforms (Good graphing calculator on an iPad... :-)

Re:Not to Diminish the Achievement...

[daveisfera]

The issue is that you can't take a phone into some areas, like into a test, and that's where a product like this comes into play.

Re:Not to Diminish the Achievement...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they're commonly used for standardised testing. YOU try to convince a high school teacher you aren't going to cheat on your internet enabled multi application device.

Re:Not to Diminish the Achievement...

[betterunixthanunix]

But why put the effort into making a piece of hardware better when the manufacturer clearly doesn't want you doing that?

Because we do not care what the manufacturer wants us to do with our hardware? We bought it, we'll use it however we want to, regardless of what the manufacturer says.

Re:Not to Diminish the Achievement...

[Anonymous Coward]

At work I just use my n900 equipped with Python, numpy, and (and hopefully matplotlib soon). Still have to use my TI89+ for exams at school however as we're not allowed to have phones out for obvious reasons.

Oh wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... Haven't thought of TICalcs in forever. I just dug up some of my old assembly.

Afrosoft Bounceballs

Wow, did I really comment every line?

And how about the binary

Download Description

BounceBall is an *oldsk00* pong clone. In the author's oppinion, it is very fun (obviously). The game is only 898bytes, and has extensive documentation in the source code. Good to learn by.

I really wrote like that back in 2000?! Wow... And someone downloaded it 5 times this week?!

It's kind of like what they said about tattoos. What I thought was good 10 years ago, I think is absolutely horrible now.

Solution

[Vahokif]

They should sell two models with exactly the same capabilities, except one should be as locked down as possible and the other should be totally unrestricted and have a wildly different color scheme so you can tell them apart. This way hackers get to hack and examiners can be sure if they're not using the calculators to cheat.

Re:Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The TI-89 isn't permitted for the ACT or SAT tests. Naturally, one of my favorite things to do was take the board inside of my TI-89 and swap it with the one inside of my TI-84. Now I have an 89 that looks like an 84. Cheating? Damn straight it is. Now tell me what's going to stop me from swapping my colored cases...

Re:Solution

[noidentity]

Uhhh, yeah, how many seconds until a hacker swaps the shells of two so that his hackable one looks like the unhackable one?

Re:Solution

[Vahokif]

Well they can do that now. There must be a way of making a case that you can't open without breaking it.

Re:Solution

[langelgjm]

You could make them different form factors so that the shells aren't able to swapped without cutting off critical parts of the calculator :-)

Re:Solution

[rennerik]

That's actually not true. The TI-89 *is* allowed on the SAT; the TI-89 Plus is not (the one that has a QWERTY keyboard). I used my TI-89 on the SAT not too long ago and there were no problems. They also don't reset your memory either, and there are programs out there, like the SAT OS which aims to help you with the SAT math sections by solving things for you, and it's perfectly acceptable. You still need to know *how* to solve things.

The ability to run software on their hardware

[noidentity]

You have a right to not buy TI products. TI has a right to sell you whatever crap they want, as long as they don't misrepresent it. What they're fighting for is the continued ability to run their own software on the calculators. That is not a right.

Re:The ability to run software on their hardware

[Hatta]

You have a right to not buy TI products.

Not always. In my school district a TI-83 purchase was mandatory for pre-calc.

Re:The ability to run software on their hardware

[icebraining]

Actually, it is. They bought the calcs, they have the right to run whatever they want on them.

They don't have the right to demand TI to remove the DRM, though.

Homebrew status on DSi?

[tepples]

I haven't used my TI calc for awhile though; my DSi is more fun. :)

I know there are special DSi flash cards that can run DS (not DSi) homebrew on a DSi. But has the DSi been usefully hacked in DSi mode, with the built-in SD slot and the cameras available to homebrew? Or would it be better to stick with my DS Lite for homebrew? There doesn't seem to be any recent news on dsibrew.org.

Just fake the UI

[saibot834]

In my school, one student who wrote his own little programs in Basic and didn't want to loose them due to an exam, wrote another program that faked the normal UI and displayed a menu where you could 'reset' the calculator even though nothing really happened. You could only tell by one small detail (a tiny bar on the upper right corner, indicating a program was currently running) that it wasn't the real deal. None of the teachers realized that.

And that was done with a normal Basic program. I guess if you code directly in Assembler, you can do much more.

Re:Just fake the UI

[nattt]

We just used to slot some cardboard or sheet plastic in the back of the calculator - Casio fx7000-G so that when the teach pushed a pen in to hit the rest switch, it just hit the plastic and didn't reset the calculator.

Compulsory education

[tepples]

You have a right to not buy TI products.

School systems have a right to require TI products at the high school level. Children do not have a right not to go to school.

Re:Compulsory education

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes Children do. My Children are home schooled.

Re:Compulsory education

[roman_mir]

School systems have a right to require TI products at the high school level. Children do not have a right not to go to school.

- the entire idea of mandatory education and education boards and departments of education is screwed up, it produces too many robots and not enough thinking people and wastes too much time of time thinking people. It has got to go.

Re:Compulsory education

[Skapare]

They should not have any such right. They can have the right to limit test taking to school owned calculators they loan out during the tests. But to compel students to buy something specific that has limited uses is stupid. Calculators generally have the same user interface, so students can buy whatever they want. If they want to buy the exact model the school will provide in exams, that's fine. Or students should be able to buy a better one that won't lose their cool programs.

Re:Compulsory education

[adamdoyle]

You have a right to not buy TI products.

School systems have a right to require TI products at the high school level. Children do not have a right not to go to school.

Sure they do... they can switch districts (by moving or paying tuition), go to a private school, or even home-school.

Re:Compulsory education

[tepples]

But to compel students to buy something specific that has limited uses is stupid.

Like a textbook or chemistry lab materials?

Re:Compulsory education

[tepples]

they can switch districts (by moving or paying tuition), go to a private school, or even home-school.

All of which are far more expensive than buying a calculator. That's where the public school corporation has students and their parents by the gonads. Besides, even the other high school districts in an area use the same standardized tests, such as ISTEP in Indiana and SAT nationwide, with the same calculator policies.

Re:Compulsory education

[Anonymous Coward]

But to compel students to buy something specific that has limited uses is stupid.

Like a textbook or chemistry lab materials?

Yes. What American public school have you heard of that requires students to buy those things?

Re:Compulsory education

[tepples]

Fort Wayne Community Schools charges each student an annual fee for textbook rental.

this line indicates the subject of my post

[nwmann]

Unless the calcs are somehow wirelessly updating the OS then STFU you don't have to update the OS. Those of you who wish to write your own apps for the calculator have at it, just don't update your OS dumbshit.

Re:this line indicates the subject of my post

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just don't update your OS" doesn't work if your calculator came with the new OS.

simple, no calculators!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am convinced that it is possible to design tests for almost any subject which do NOT require calculators (e.g. the physics GRE)! I also had a few profs in grad school who were adamantly against any kind of technology on tests (no phones allowed, no calculators, etc.). Quantum and E&M in particular come to mind.

ground rules on each test were something like this :
- final answer is symbolic
- leave fundamental constants symbolic
- if you MUST do a computation round the constant to the nearest integer (e = 3, pi = 3, etc.)

Any problems with actual physical numbers were given on the test and rounded (e.g. distance to moon = 4e5 km)
Problems were designed and tested (by a TA) without a calculator. You were graded based on the final answer, but MOSTLY based on all of your work leading up to that answer. Computational problems with "real" numbers were left for homework.

Keep in mind that everyone in these classes obviously KNEW how to do the simple algebra the CAS on a ti-89 can do.... but that's not the point. It's about test security. Once you have access to one of these devices, you have people loading custom firmware (w/ hotkeys and backdoors), swapping out cases (e.g. the guy with the ti-84 story above), etc. etc.

Pity there isn't a judge with some ballls.....

[Anonymous Coward]

That would rule, If the end user actually purchases said hardware, (whatever it is), they have the right to do whatever the hell they please. Now if you want to try LEASING consumers something that the maker retains ownership of, go right on ahead! Watch Apple and all the other hard lock companies fall all over themselves to try to: 1. Explain that shit to the 90% of the sheeple who don't get it. and 2. Watch their marketshare fall as copycats who actually let you control the hardware leave them in the dust.

Legislating from the bench? Yep, just wish one freakin judge would have the sack to do it.

Problem

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Same problem as before. People hack the DRM, student start cheating again.

You are doing it wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps TI should un-DRM their calculators, and the test proctors should supply calculators for the test.
TI sells more calculators:one for each student (who might do low level programming too) and 50 to the proctor.

maybe they don't want to have there games and othe

[Joe The Dragon]

maybe they don't want to have there games and other non cheat stuff wiped out?

I'd rather have an HP-50G

[Anonymous Coward]

...since RPN rules, and the HP sw stack is far superior to TI's.

Anyways, graphing calculators with alot of builtin mathematical functions are sometimes just alot handier to use than pulling out a nb and firing up mathematic/matlab/octave...

Hell, I sometimes even use the calc when sitting right at a desktop...

Drawback of this one is even though they moved on to a faster ARM CPU it still emulates their old CPU arch(Saturn), so they wouldn't have re-write all the builtin calc sw... (I'm still using an old 49G with an actualy Saturn CPU...)

Re:I'd rather have an HP-50G

[Skapare]

Schools would never allow that. RPN confuses the teachers.

Re:I'd rather have an HP-50G

[eclectro]

Actually HP calculator quality has been falling off significantly the past few years as they have seemed to be outsourcing and cutting corners. I can't help but think that Carly Fiorina was largely responsible.

Re:I'd rather have an HP-50G

[PCM2]

Actually I quite like the HP 50g, and if you look at the main product page you'll see it has just eight one- and two-star reviews versus 183 four- and five-star reviews.

Bring back Slide Rules

[flyingfsck]

We used Slide Rules - yeah, I'm that old. A Slide Rule is more environmentally friendly than a calculator. It doesn't use any mercury, lead or batteries...

WTF do kids needs graphing screens for in an exam anyway? They cannot submit the stupid graphs. So what is the point? An Abacus would work better.

Re:Bring back Slide Rules

[Legion303]

"A Slide Rule is more environmentally friendly than a calculator. It doesn't use any mercury, lead or batteries..."

Mine does. The retrofit is surprisingly easy, requiring only an old thermostat regulator, car battery (check the local junkyard) and any button cells you care to glue on for effect.

My experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a TI-82 my senior year in high school, and a TI-89 I got when I was a senior in college taking Calculus II. I still have the TI-89, and it works beautifully, even though I don't exactly use it to its full extent.

I had one math teacher in high school who was that type of teacher everybody has at least once--rude, unprofessional, malicious, and rigs her classes to make students fail. We're talking calling students "stupid" in class and separating classrooms into the "smart side" and "dumb side". Of course, her 30+ years of "experience" made the principal publicly fawn over her, even though the whole school practically erupted in cheer when she retired.

In any case, she did not allow graphing calculators on exams unless _she_ got to wipe it. I told her that she did not have permission to touch it, so she had to loan me an empty TI-82 from the school's collection.

That was the only time--high school and college--I ever had an instructor insist on inspecting calculators before an exam.

Having been a high-school teacher myself (not math; PC Support), I have a simple philosophy: if you can program [or hack] a calculator to help you through an exam, it's pretty obvious you know the material on the exam.

that's fine

[zogger]

Like others have pointed out, issue a standard locked down simple calculator just for the tests. That still leaves a niche for all those other times outside of tests where a truly open and easily hackable calculator could have a market.

me = older guy who remembers when we couldn't use our slide rules on tests...and we made real bona fide stinky brand blueprints... and first drew it by hand..and during recess, we practiced our nerd ninja skills by ripping an onion off of our belt, tossing it up in the air, and slicing it cleanly in half with the slide rule edge we had honed down with our teeth....then before the two slices hit the floor, you had to re-scabbard your slide rule sword, draw two mechanical pencils from your pocket protector, one with each hand, and neatly stab the two slices. Then we ate them for lunch.

Kids..they just don't believe a dang thing we say about ye olden days...

slide rules/tests

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll just point out that when I took the Professional Engineer exam about 10-15 years ago, you could do it ALL with a simple $10 non-programmable calculator that has trig functions, and since the test is open book, you could do it with an adding machine or abacus and a math tables book.
(or, a slide rule).

Doing away with the "graphing calculator" thing (and the "solving equation" feature) would not cripple math classes. Yes, it's nice to be able to graph the equation automatically, so there's some pedagogical value, but one could easily figure out another way to teach the material. (having watched 2 daughters proceed through the K-12 math curriculum)..In fact, I'd say that there were maybe a handful of homework problems they needed to do where a graphing calculator actually helped.

Re:slide rules/tests

[petermgreen]

What I always found helped most with a graphic calculator was not the graphing functionality (which I used fairly rarely) but the screen size.

I found being able to check what I was typing and look back at the last few calculations made it far easier to avoid mistakes.

On older non-graphic calculators you could only see the value you were typing at the time and didn't see anything much when you pressed the operators. More modern ones are better but still show a lot less than graphic ones.

well

[lindoran]

that was fast....

I have one.

[Robadob]

I got my TI-Nspire for doing 2 weeks unpaid work experience with their 2 IT guys in their offices at Northampton. I've barley used it, their is a piece of software that i got with it, which is basically the calculator software running in a virtual machine. Its pretty neat, would be nicer with the ability to code small apps for it without needing to crack it.

Why we can't have nice things

[westlake]

The devices are being designed to thwart the user's attempt to install software without thwarting the manufacturer. That is a strike against us and our rights, regardless of how you phrase it.

These calculators are designed to thwart cheating in the middle and high school grades.

The educational market is the only commercially viable market.

If TI takes the product off retail shelves, you will have one less thing left to play with.

GASP!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting that sometimes the profit motive works against the consumer? I'm surprised you weren't buried as a troll.

Why is this even an issue?

[seeker_1us]

If you are trying to test calculus/physics/algebra/whatever it's pretty easy to make the actual arithmetic simple enough to do in your head or on scratch paper.

My First Language

[pgn674]

My first programming language was TI-BASIC on the TI-83 Plus graphing calculator. Made some nifty things with that. Then, my second language was assembly for the Z80 processor on that calculator. Self-taught from random how-to's found online. It was that that made me realize I liked programming, and was the primary reason why I became CS major at college.

AFAIK, TI made no attempt to stop assembly program support for the TI-83 Plus. In fact, if I recall, one of the ways to get an assembly program onto a calculator was by using a TI produced software application on your computer. If TI had attempted and succeeded to stop assembly support for that calculator, I may not be the programmer I am today.

TI, for the sake of our future, please let us hack our calculators.

Re:My First Language

[Dwedit]

The history of Assembly on the TI-8x calculators is interesting.
Assembly language programming started on the TI-85 when someone discovered that the Custom menu on memory backups had code pointers, so you could change those pointers and run arbitrary ASM code. The TI92 also had a flaw that allowed user code to run.
By the time the TI-83 came along, TI had wised up, and built in a command to run assembly code. This command was somewhat obscure, It was "Send(9prgmXXXX" where XXXX is the program name. It's not a bug or anything, it's a hidden command that runs a HEX-encoded assembly program.
Then the TI-86 and TI-83+ came along, and the command was renamed to "Asm(", and was placed in the Catalog of commands. No more obscurity.

The only thing TI has really done to try to thwart ASM programming is add the 8.8k program size limit on the TI83+ series. You can't execute code from address C000 or greater, the hardware will crash. TI's logic was that you would need to buy the APP development kit, and make a 16k-sized flash rom Application, and you couldn't make RAM rips of flash applications because the code is too big.

standardized tests don't need graphing calcs

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Who the hell needs a graphing calculator on a standardized test? Why do standardized tests allow them at all? Hell, at the level of middle and high school standardized tests, you needn't even a calculator at all. I just graduated with a B.S. in Physics, and all but a very, very few times did we ever need calculators; tests were done with abstract variables, as you don't need numbers to show that you understand how to solve a problem.

And if you must absolutely have a calculator for a test, I can think of absolutely zero times where a graphing calculator is required. The TI's fantastic Scientific TI-3X lineup is much, much more than is sufficient for anything that you'll ever need below graduate school. And even in graduate school, you're more likely to need to use a computer, not the paltry processing power of a graphing calculator.

To date, the only real use for a graphing calculator I've ever had that I couldn't use a simpler calculator for is the TI-89's fantastic units, so I could calculate long strings of physics equations without ever needing to convert the units (since the calculator did the unit converting for me).

ti-89 gets me caught up in the algebra

[MasaMuneCyrus]

Almost every time I've ever tried to have the TI-89 factor or simplify something for me that was more than an already easily-simplifiable equation, I have ended up with an equation that is far, far worse and almost impossible to work with. I would strongly advise against using the TI-89 for any kind of simplification beyond the kind that is simple enough to do without a calculator.

Re:ti-89 gets me caught up in the algebra

[Peach Rings]

You're using it wrong then. The CAS is great, especially for pulverizing ugly fractions.. it can find common denominators, multiply by the conjugate, divide out polynomial factors, clean up trig expressions w/ trig identities, etc etc.

My TI taught me to programme.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably the simplest platform you can get to start programming on, but still pretty powerful. Hell, we had student-created games floating around the school that everyone was playing. Maybe it's time to move away from standardized tests that are limited like this, like we now actually allow calculators in school in the first place. Who here in their job is going to break out their abacus because grabbing a calculator will be cheating?, no one, because in the real world you don't spend hours working on something when a little piece of plastic and silicon can do it for you.

Not all

[aepervius]

First yeah a slide rule could do a lot of stuff. And some operation could even be done quicker. But modern calculator allow you to not only give your oepration in text and modify it, which means you can CHECK AGAIN and retrace your step (which you CANNOT do with a slide rule), but they also do the graph for you integrate and derivate the EQUATION, which a slide rule cannot do for you , find minima, maxima, cook your coffee, and what not. You name it, they can do it. Slide rule can do calculation and that's it. Modern calculator are more like mini math Lab.

Because it's Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it was defeated....didn't you see the movie? The Evil DRM Lord didn't realize the power of the transparent slashdot force, not to mention the total disregard for the law that all Tinfoil Hatters have. Lest they not be able to use their little calculators as they need. Mommy needed to have her taxes done, and the basement was getting boring. Lukewarm Slashdotter to the rescue!!!!!

In Reality

[thegarbz]

A number of people pointed out that when they were in school, calculators were reset to the factory defaults before they were allowed to use them on an exam.

In reality there's no one going through resetting to factory defaults and making sure it was successful. The supervisors for some exams were dumb. I have a Sharp EL-9600 which has a reset button on the back just like all the TI calculators. The examiners just assumed hitting this button would erase all programs and notes from the calculator just like the TIs, so they just pressed it and moved on. Then when they are far enough away I flip it over to see the screen say: "Reset: Press CL to clear all memory, or press ON to cancel."

Mind you the rules also said no devices with QUERTY key layout. I never understood this. I have full text input support on my calculator except that the text runs across ABCDE... etc. What is written in the rule books and what actually happens is never the same thing.

Re:In Reality

[Smauler]

Mind you the rules also said no devices with QUERTY key layout. I never understood this.

Me neither... I guess they must be just angry at one guy who custom hacked his keyboard or something, so they got back at him.

Why not just pass the test.

[sjbe]

A reed switch with a flip-flop style latch would be totally invisible from outside of the calculator. Just carry a small magnet and hover it over the magic spot on your calc to switch memory banks.

If you are smart enough to do this you probably are smart enough to just go ahead and do well on the test without cheating.

Re:Why not just pass the test.

[petermgreen]

Afaict the problem isn't so much those who actually figure out new and inventive ways to cheat (who as you say probablly didn't need to cheat in the first place) as those that reuse others cheating systems.