TI vs. Calculator Hobbyists, the Next Round 301
An anonymous reader writes "Texas Instruments has struck back against Nspire gamers and hackers with even stronger anti-downgrade protection in OS 3.0.2, after the TI calculator hacking community broke the anti-downgrade protection found in OS 2.1 last summer and the new one in OS 3.0.1 a month ago. In addition to that, in OS 3.0.1 the hacker community found Lua programming support and created games and software using it. Immediately, TI retaliated by adding an encryption check to make sure those third-party generated programs won't run on OS 3.0.2." But if you want it, you can get OS 3.0.2 here.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
I believe it's related to them being certified tamperproof.. allowed in exams.. academia, their main customers etc etc
Re:Which calculator is powerful and Hobbyist frien (Score:5, Informative)
The HP series of graphing calculators allow hacking and programming.
On the 50g, you can write in RPL, Saturn Assembly, C and ARM Assembly. It uses an ARM processor to emulate the Saturn processor that came in the 48.
While the 50g is not as nice physically as the 48gx in terms of keyboard, it's miles ahead of the 49. Stay away from the 49 and the 48gII.
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BMO
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Because their main customers are academic test producers who mandate TI calculators for use with the scan tron tests because they're less "hackable". This causes every student in high school to be forced to go out and buy one for use on the exams.
The enthusiast crowd isn't even a rounding error in that market, so it makes sense for TI not to care about them.