TI vs. Calculator Hobbyists, Again 417
Deep Thought writes "Texas Instruments, already infamous thanks to the signing key controversy last year, is trying a new trick to lock down its graphing calculators, this time directed toward its newest TI-Nspire line. The TI-Nspires were already the most controlled of TI's various calculator models, and no third-party development of any kind (except for its very limited form of TI-BASIC) was allowed until the release of the independent tool Ndless. Since its release, TI has been determined to prevent the large calculator programming community from using it. Its latest released operating system for the Nspire family (version 2.1) now prevents the calculators from downgrading to OS 1.1, needed to run Ndless. This is TI's second major attack on Ndless, as the company has already demanded that websites posting the required OS 1.1 remove it from public download [PDF, in French], obviously to prevent use of the tool. Once again, TI is preventing calculator hobbyists from running their own software on calculators they bought and paid for."
Why bother?! (Score:5, Informative)
Go for HP then. (learn RPN!!)
And even then, if I want to hack it, I'd go for a Palm or software in an iPhone/ Android. The processor and raphics in these things runs circles around calculators.
I understand for some occasions (tests, etc) it has to be a calculator, but I doubt it would be allowed to run modified software.
Time for discreet calculators is almost over.
How long since you were in school? (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand for some occasions (tests, etc) it has to be a calculator, but I doubt it would be allowed to run modified software.
Which represents a TREMENDOUS market for TI, one that they are not going to give up on so easily. You may doubt that modified software will be allowed, but nobody is looking at checksums before you enter a testing room. The assumption is that you have not modified your calculator, and if that assumption is shaken, it will mean the end of a lot of calculators for standardized tests. If I were to try to guess why TI is fighting these hackers, I would say that it is all about the standardized tests, where TI calculators are exceedingly popular.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:5, Funny)
That's right, kids, in the real world you won't have access to reference materials and may very well need to solve equations in your head to save your life, MacGyver style.
In elementary school I wasn't allowed to count on my fingers because the teacher thought it was more important to know addition tables by rote instead of relying on other learning methods. So I learned to visualize counting on my toes. I wound up with a B.Sc. in theoretical mathematics. They sure showed me.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Of course. After all, you could lose your fingers in an accident, and if rely on your fingers to count, you'll be lost. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
That's right, kids, in the real world you won't have access to reference materials and may very well need to solve equations in your head to save your life, MacGyver style.
Yes! When the zombie uprising comes along and all the calculators are destroyed (why the calculators? who knows!) you'll be thankful when you're trying to figure out the number of bullets you can afford to sink into each zombie.
Seriously though, if primary school maths is just "how to use a calculator" then it's being done wrong.
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:5, Insightful)
The calculators will be destroyed by the zombies to strengthen the brains of the humans, thus increasing their nutritional value to the zombies. DUH.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The sad part is, I don't know whether I was marked insightful for the math part or the zombie part... meh.
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? You can't see the value in forcing kids to learn how to count in their heads? And you can't tell that your teacher helped you figure out how to improve your mental visualization?
Just. Wow.
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:4, Funny)
The sadistic side of me thinks it would probably enjoy seeing someone do that, but with Chisanbop [wikipedia.org].
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:5, Funny)
I live in a hex household myself (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well now in social situations when somebody asks you how many chicken nuggets you want, or how long you have been with the company, you don't look like a retard when you put your hands up and start counting fingers.
Chicken McNuggets come in 6, 10, and sometimes 20 or 50 quantities. So if you're in a McDonalds and counting is involved in your chicken nugget order, you're doing it wrong. And if you're ordering the 50 piece "party bucket" you're probably also doing "avoiding heart disease" wrong too.
Seriously? You can't see the value in forcing kids to learn how to count in their heads?
I see more value in allowing children to come up with their own solutions and find what works best for them. They'll do it anyway, as I did and GP did. Show me a study that demonstrates finger-counting actually impedes ma
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So, you had to convert from dactylonomy to what? Phalangonomy?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
i wasn't using this to cheat, but to keep the games i had from being deleted since the hours in between tests were one of the primary times i wanted to have my games with me.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well, in many of my classes we weren't allowed anything but a pencil for a test. Everything else was provided.
In others, you could bring a calculator, however, since they were multi-step problems, you still had to write everything out. The calculator was really only good for checking that you'd correctly manipulated the numbers.
In a couple you could bring in anything you wanted. You were given 3 hours. The average score was under 45% with the maximum being barely 80%.
You actually had to understand the mater
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:5, Interesting)
My HS math teacher spent her spare time designing her tests carefully so that no calculators were needed. If you got down to the end of a question, and you had messed up and ended up with something that *would* need manual calculation, you didn't have to work out the calculation--you'd just lose the point(s) on whatever theoretical part you screwed up, and that was it.
No calculators were ever allowed---nor were they needed.
I learned one hell of a lot of math.... including vector calc and laplace transforms senior year (finished ap calc bc junior year along with 11 other kids, so that teacher wrote course material for a calc 3 class).
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
the teacher could wipe those bitches clean in five seconds ... Oh, and she could program.
Do you have her phone number?
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:5, Informative)
we weren't allowed used any programmable calculators or calculators which could store info.
I went to college in the 60s.. (Score:2)
I still have my slide rule. You never know when civilization is going to collapse and you can't get calculator batteries for your non-solar powered ones.
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:4, Interesting)
I graduated in 2004.
Funny enough, in my university there were ZERO TI Calcs, we would all be in HP48/HP48+ and beginning to see the 49s... (not in US, as you may have guessed)
But I've seen TI calcs (in France), people would use TI-92s and entry-level models, still, there was one HP48 in my class there.
[quote]If I were to try to guess why TI is fighting these hackers, I would say that it is all about the standardized tests, where TI calculators are exceedingly popular.[/quote]
Makes sense... Still, I'd guess they would ban the 'fancy' calculators.
At the same time, people would not check the fact that some people had entire tests solved on their 48G+ (I had the 48G)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
At the same time, people would not check the fact that some people had entire tests solved on their 48G+
I saw the same thing on the TI-83, and it was not just tests -- I saw people storing entire textbooks (which surprised me, since I thought the calculators had limited memory). Somehow, this never seemed to catch the attention of the teachers...
Re: (Score:2)
Heh, I graduated in 1982, and I was one of the few people who had a calculator. I think I paid > $50 for a 4 function calculator earlier in high school, for my senior year I bought an HP32E which I think set me back a couple hundred bucks. I worked more than a month to be able to buy it. I don't think it had any memory at all apart from the stack and the statistics registers.
I wasn't allowed to use a calculator at all on tests in most classes. OK, I was a smart ass and brought in a slide rule, the ph
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
OK, I was a smart ass and brought in a slide rule, the physics instructor let me use it, I think because he thought it was funny. It was useful as a double-check.
Hey I did that, we weren't allowed calculators so brought my Granddad's old slide rule for a joke and was allowed to use it. Thankfully I knew how to use it and it wasn't just there as a funny looking ruler :)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I graduated from high school in 1977. The very first time I saw a calculator was in "A" school in the Navy, later on that year. I bought one at the Navy Exchange, can't remember the price. It was a Casio calculator, I can't remember the model number. We used to get drunk and use it to play music on our stereo in the barracks room. Tune an FM radio to an unused frequency, lay the calculator on top, and just press the buttons. The radio would pick up the frequencies, demodulate them, and play them back.
I saw that in physic (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"This slide rule has obviously been tampered with! So said the teacher!"
"A slide rule? Luxury! When I was a school boy we only had an abacus!"
"Ha, that's nothing! When I was in school we weren't allowed to count using our fingers!"
(With apologies to Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch)
Re:How long since you were in school? (Score:5, Funny)
(With apologies to Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch)
When I were a lad it were the Three Yorkshiremen sketch.
On't radio.
Re: (Score:2)
We only had the original Etch-a-Sketch, which consisted of a flat rock, a chisel, and a hammer.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You had lookouts? We had to give someone to the sabertooth tiger every night, just to keep him happy!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Standardized tests should never include calculators. They are to test knowledge of concepts, not button pushing skills.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Standardized tests should never include calculators. They are to test knowledge of concepts, not button pushing skills.
If the calculator allows you to focus on the concepts being tested instead of basic arithmetic then isn't that a good thing? Looking up trig tables and doing the multiplication by hand doesn't strike me as a good way of testing the concepts of trigonometry. And while there are many ways of showing an understanding of the concepts other than seeing if you get the right final answer, it's by far the easiest measurement.
If basic arithmetic is the thing being tested then by all means, ban the calculator from th
Re: (Score:2)
There are quite a lot of schools outside US in EU that also allow various TI calculators for standardised tests. I did my finals in 2000, and one of the worst things from schools perspective even back then was customised software. They required us to give the calculators away a week before the test so that faculty could check for software changes and reset the calculators to factory settings.
Totally agree (Score:3, Informative)
Who the [expletive deleted] would want to mess with a TI?
You're much better off using an HP.
RPN got me into stack architecture, FORTH, Smalltalk and lots of other things.
Re: (Score:2)
It's too bad HP doesn't make real calculators anymore. All of them have that cursed = sign on them. They have an RPN mode, but I don't like that they even have an algebraic mode.
I'd buy an older one off eBay but they're pretty expensive these days. I used to have an HP15 but I haven't seen it for years now (cry).
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand why people would want to pay for either HP or TI, they are both overpriced for what they deliver.
A Casio FX-9860G Slim is dirt cheap, great processor, decent screen, the absolute best form factor and a complete C SDK. No native RPN, but plenty of add-ons for that.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
+1
If you use graphing calcs and own an ipod touch or iphone, I suggest checking out this [iphone-calc.com].
Its $0.99, ands beats the pants off of the ti83/84 series (pinch zoom rocks for function graphs!)
I did a demo in one of my classes last semester and (not surprisingly) all students which own such devices said they'd rather use this instead of a standalone calc. we're thinking of buying a set of calcs for instructor checkout during exams, thereby eliminating the need to force hundreds of our students to shell out $100+
Re: (Score:2)
We donated our TI calc that we had to buy for our daughter in high school (specific model required) to the high school, to loan out to students. If all those students have these calcs that they're never going to use again, why not donate them?
battery life (Score:2)
And even then, if I want to hack it, I'd go for a Palm or software in an iPhone/ Android. The processor and raphics in these things runs circles around calculators.
Battery life in my HP 48GX runs circles around your Android. It sits in my desk, and any time I need it, it works; battery life is dependent on how long you actually use it- there's little standby drain. I cannot remember the last time I replaced the 3 alkaline AA's.
Also, I bet your Android doesn't get faster after you've charged the batte
Re: (Score:2)
Try plotting a Root locus [wikipedia.org] graph on a 48GX
I know, the batteries on these things runs almost forever, still, it's way underpowered for some things.
The software is great but it could be a tad better (and the 49's had a better processor, EMULATING the older processor)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
IIRC HP quit the calculator business.
Really? [hp.com]
Sure, and a PC runs rings around Cell phones. That does not make them great calculators however, as it's the tiny math related buttons you want.
Something like these [droidfreeapps.com] is probably what the OP was talking about.
Why? (Score:2)
Seriously - why are they trying to stop this? It's not like there is a huge app store (phones) or a huge market for pirating apps (nintendo ds/psp) where they would lose money by allowing this. Can somebody explain the reasoning behind their unwillingness to allow hobbyist applications to me?
Standardized tests (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
So by doing this they are not serving their actual customers but bowing down to the pressure of school / testing entities. Interesting indeed.
As somebody who's not from the US I've never quite understood why TI behaved this way. But they are basically bowing down to SAT and other tests like this. Thanks for the explanation!
Then... why not release a hackable calculator? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, if there is enough market for a hackable calculator, then TI should sell another model which its user could load software into.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Or in other words, we have to expect our students to have a skillset that was abandoned decades ago. Worse, we may have to abandon requiring numerical answers all
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They're called scientific calculators as opposed to graphic calculators, as far as I can tell. I used one of those for my calculus class, they cost $10 to $15 nowadays.
Re:Standardized tests (Score:5, Insightful)
> Then either don't allow calculators at all or provide standard calculators.
Or require students to use a specific model of calculator, with their names printed on the back. Before each test, collect the calculators, shuffle them, and hand them out randomly. Statistically, absent wholesale class-wide collusion, your problem is solved.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actuarial exams already require the calculator you bring to be one of a very specific models.
Re: (Score:2)
Cheating?
I envy highschool kids these days. Those hoops sure would have been a lot easier to jump through if I'd had access to these sorts of tools.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Think more sciency. Equations, conversions, laws, definitions, charts. Shit, a periodic table hidden in my calculator would have bumped my chemistry grade a full letter. Phase change maps, orbitals, and shit? Balanced redox reactions for any conceivable chemicals? Game over.
As for standardized tests, it's been too long for me to know. They allowed TI-83s the 7 years or so ago that I took it though.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But then again, I recall having a professor in college that let us have unlimited notes, books and pretty much everything except each other and the internet. On the basis that you wouldn't finish the test if you were making too much use.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://sat.collegeboard.com/register/sat-test-day-checklist#calcPolicy [collegeboard.com]
http://www.actstudent.org/faq/answers/calculator.html [actstudent.org]
Both the SATs and the ACTs allow graphing calculators. The SATs are actually more lenient prohibiting only calculators with a qwerty keypad, the ACTs ban the TI-89/92(+) Series or calcs because of the CAS (Computerized algebraic solver IIRC)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In HS, when wee were doing matrices, I got bit by the 'show the work' requirement.
So I wrote a program onto the calculator (TI-85) That would 'show the work' that I could transcribe to my test.
*I* didn't consider it cheating, because If I could describe the algorithm to a computer in a programming language, I felt that I had sufficiently mastered it, and any additional assignments were simply busy work.
Re: (Score:2)
Being required to have information "in your head" for math tests is stupid anyway.
Understanding the concepts and knowing when to apply them is much more important. If the exercises are all so equal that you just need to remember the steps, you're not learning math, you're learning something closer to a factory job.
Having a good memory is increasingly becoming useless, as memory aids are now almost ubiquitous. And if you don't have such aids, you'll be probably be focusing less on abstract math and more on s
What would HS have been like (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was interested in programming before, but high school programming on the TI-83 was very important when the teacher had to explain that concept, again and again.
I still remember writing a game where two cannons fired at each other on a turn basis, using the physics equations we'd learned just a few classes before. I would always lose :|
preventing hobbyist software? (Score:2)
the company has already demanded that websites posting the required OS 1.1 remove it from public download [PDF, in French], obviously to prevent use of the tool. Once again, TI is preventing calculator hobbyists from running their own software on calculators they bought and paid for.
If I'm parsing the "their" correctly, TI is preventing hobbyists from running hobbyist software? Perhaps, but TI is also trying to prevent hobbyists from running a buggy version of TI software. A little objectivity is a good thing.
Not a justification (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah yeah, copyright, and TI should be deified for having created some software and if they say you can't have it, you can't, even if all your friends do.
Re: (Score:2)
Thats not a good answer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
you're entitled to distribute it (if you can get it in the first place)
If I can get it in the first place. Did you give it to me, or did I illegally enter your home and take it?
If you give it to me, ask me to not give it to others, and then I choose to be an asshole and give it to others, then that makes me untrustworthy, but that is about it. You cannot claim that as someone who produced some creative work, you have the absolute right to dictate that some group of people is allowed to have it, and some group is never allowed to have it. In fact, we have a requirement
Re: (Score:2)
You cannot claim that as someone who produced some creative work, you have the absolute right to dictate that some group of people is allowed to have it, and some group is never allowed to have it. In fact, we have a requirement that copyrights expire and that creative works enter the public domain for that very reason: people who make creative works are not gods.
No, people who make creative works are not gods, but you seem to be confused - yes, copyrights expire and creative works do enter the public domain, but until then yes the producer (or copyright owner if that copyright has been sold by the producer) certainly has the right to dictate exactly which group of people can have the work, and which cannot.
Part of copyright is the right to not to distribute, and that right is just as valid as being able to distribute.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I was specifically arguing against a more restrictive argument than that. Regarding the "stop distributing" part, tough nut. I'm not much of a fan of copyright as it stands right now, but matter of fact is, it's law. You can say "it's a crap law and I won't follow it" all you want, it still won't change that it's law, and TI is perfectly within its legal rights to demand people to stop distributing an old version of their software. Despite all the disingenuous comments that 1.1 is still being used for
Re:preventing hobbyist software? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Ti is refusing to let you downgrade your OS to the one that came with the damn calculator. Even if they are 100% legal in doing it, its a dick move.
The problem is schools! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, not the schools specifically. But that schools are TI's primary market for graphing calculators, and they have a huge markup due to using outdated hardware, so they're going to want to push them.
Unfortunately, schools require the calculators to be crippled to prevent their use for cheating (which could be non-math related cheating...), thus ensuring that students will learn to lean on devices that they will never see in their subsequent careers in industry or research.
If the portable math-machine really were something that people felt they needed, you'd see iPhone apps that were actually useful: the hardware is far more capable than the piddling processors they're putting in the math-class toys, or you'd see the prices of dedicated hardware drop into the $10-$20 range that scientific calculators have been in for decades.
Graphing calculators, at the moment, seem to have little more purpose than to bilk schools out of money from well-meaning but ill-informed "technology initiatives."
Best answer (Score:2)
Write your own hobbyist OS. Someone needs to disassemble the 2.1 OS then translate it into accurate and detailed pseudo-code. After that, another team needs to take the results of the first step and write it again using the pseudo-code as the map. Once that works achieving a high level of compatibility, then focus on improvements that will better enable functions and features.
Alternatives and other issues aside, a real hobbyist solution is to build one's own OS.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought TI had seen the light... (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was in high school, Zshell (an exploit that allowed running native Z80 assembly on a TI-85) was all the rage. The exploit and various apps (mostly games) spread virally throughout the school. I did some Z80 assembly programming myself, and it was a learning experience arguably more useful to my career than anything I learned in high school...
Years later at college, when my old 85 had been handed down to a younger sibling, I found I needed a graphing calculator for a physics class. I bought a TI-89 and was impressed to see TI allowed it to run native software, no hacks required. (There were still hacks, to get around a few limitations such as code size, but even these limitations were relaxed in later firmware versions.) I spent far more time programming the calculator than actually using it as a calculator.
Now they're back in their lock-it-down mode? Shame. It always disappoints me when manufacturers go out of their way to make their devices less useful--and in this case, a less capable learning tool, for budding programmers anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I thought TI had seen the light... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's sad (Score:2, Interesting)
It's sad that TI are having to do this. When I was at school we basically had the choice between Casio and TI85 graphing calculators. Casio were far more popular until people discovered how to run assembly mode programs (and games) off the internet. Then everybody wanted a TI. TI even supported this at first by adding assembly mode into the TI86.
Unfortunately by the time I got to finals at university, graphing calculators had been banned because of the ability to store (and hide) extra programs and informat
Re:NO NOT MATH (Score:4, Funny)
Get your hand off it, you'll go blind if you keep doing that.
Re:NO NOT MATH (Score:5, Funny)
Don't tag me, bro!
Re:NO NOT MATH (Score:5, Funny)
That reminds me of a pretty funny thing I saw today. There's a group on Facebook advocating that police have to yell "Pikachu!" before tazing anyone. What a country.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Unless we're doing integration, in which case we call it "quadrature" to save face.
Re:NO NOT MATH (Score:4, Funny)
we mathematicians DO NOT wee calculators. We don't do arithmetic. Don't tag this math.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
we mathematicians DO NOT wee calculators. We don't do arithmetic. Don't tag this math.
that would be s/us/we/g
s/us/we/ would be
we mathematicians DO NOT use calculators. We don't do arithmetic. Don't tag this math.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NO NOT MATH (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand it either. You'd think that the people running the company were far more interested in having control over their customers than in having their customers' money.
Can't someone in marketing break into a board meeting and explain to these cretins that the more versatile a product is, it is usually more attractive to a wider segment of the potential customer base, which tends to result in more sales.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Because they want to sell them to schools and students. Only naïve students and administrators would actually buy their somewhat useful, but priced way beyond their utility in today's market, devices.
funeral drone (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like that don't buy one. None of your rights are being infringed. You got what you paid for and you are free to do with it as you will.
Nicely done. You got a passing grade in the free market school cheer ("Viva caveat emptor!") and DNF in every aspect of the situation worth discussing. You've clearly set yourself ahead well ahead of the obese peloton walking their bikes up the intellectual incline with loud proclamations that TI has no moral right to make a stupid decision (which as you rightly point out is their eternal privilege).
With any nose at all for controversy, you might have wondered out loud who TI regards as their real customers for this product. In a shocking development, it might not be the high school students (or parents thereof) who actually shell out their hard won cash. There's a challenging concept to swallow for a transactional reductionist.
TI might regard their customers for this product to be school board administrators who hold the power to set curriculum standards which induces teachers to set exams that are biased toward the success of students buying a particular TI product, abused of most of its generative learning potential by the grasping grubbiness of TI corporate headquarters.
In an educational system that prizes testability over learning, perhaps this is exactly what the true customer demands.
But as you point out, if you don't like it, you don't have to buy one. It's not like the customers of the school board (ostensibly the students) have any say in the educational product they consume, supposing they actually got together and groused publicly. It is their disempowered cash after all, that turns the main propeller.
But then, as your stellar argument has it, if the school system is corrupt you don't have to attend. There's the beauty of libertarianism. You've got a perfect retort for everything, in the world as it ought to exist.
Of the ten or more creative ways to look at this situation, caveat emptor drives the hearse.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, no one is suggesting that TI doesn't have the right to cripple their products if they so choose. People here are merely pointing out that they are doing so, and criticizing them for it. That way we can all be informed consumers, and refuse to purchase the product if we so choose. So isn't that a good thing under your free market principles? Or are you upset because you think TI has some right to operate under the cover of darkness, and customers who are fooled have no right to complain publicly?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Could somebody tell me what force you guys in America needs graphing calculator in class in the first place?
Texas Instruments is that force. I'm surprised that wasn't obvious.