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.
Well this is disappointing. (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember when the community broke the TI-92. What did TI do then? Release an upgraded version of it and made it easier ton write in assembly. What happened, TI? I no longer need your calculator products, but this is a sad thing to see.
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What happened to TI? They had a visit from Sony executives... after the doors closed all anyone heard was screams and a fight, the doors opened and all the TI execs said, "everything is all right, no need to be alarmed.... DRM is holy... DRM is good... All Hail the DRM....."
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Asked and answered (Score:3)
Why waste your time hacking a calculator that looks like it's from 1999?
I answered that in this comment [slashdot.org].
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Because only a idiot that does not know math at all would even TRY To do advanced mathematics on a touchscreen keypad/keyboard.
Which calculator is powerful and Hobbyist friendly (Score:2)
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Which calculator is powerful and Hobbyist friendly?
Archos 43. Or any other Android-powered device for that matter. But don't expect to be able to use it on standardized tests.
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Half of the utility of a calculator is a decent keyboard and layout. Sorry, but an HP48 from 1993 or 41cx or even a 15c from the 1980s wipes the floor with all PDAs and phones.
Indeed, there is going to be a reissue of the 15c this June.
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BMO
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
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Ditto, I still use regularly my HP48G, best calculator I've ever owned hands down. Once one masters the reverse polsih notation there's nothing better to do calculations.
But are they pocket friendly? (Score:2)
Fuck desktop calculators.
And then you go on to list a bunch of software that turns a desktop computer into a desktop calculator. Have you any recommendations for a counterpart to Maxima designed to run on a handheld device?
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[quote]It is well worth carrying a small laptop instead of a pocket calculator for all the added power you get, unless you're doing simple arithmetic.[/quote]
No, it isn't. Unless your level of geekdom is over 9000, that is.
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[quote]It is well worth carrying a small laptop instead of a pocket calculator for all the added power you get, unless you're doing simple arithmetic.[/quote] No, it isn't. Unless your level of geekdom is over 9000, that is.
Absolutely. If I go down to the supermarket I might have to compare unit prices, total cash etc - so a small calculator in my pocket is a good idea. I am unlikely to come across anything needing a laptop's power or find it worth carrying one. At geek levels of 8500 or more you may well not be able to resist trying to optimise the queuing at checkouts or simulate the airflow for optimum placement of air-conditioning outlets, freezers and doorways.
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[quote]It is well worth carrying a small laptop instead of a pocket calculator for all the added power you get, unless you're doing simple arithmetic.[/quote]
No, it isn't. Unless your level of geekdom is over 9000, that is.
Absolutely. If I go down to the supermarket I might have to compare unit prices, total cash etc - so a small calculator in my pocket is a good idea. I am unlikely to come across anything needing a laptop's power or find it worth carrying one. At geek levels of 8500 or more you may well not be able to resist trying to optimise the queuing at checkouts or simulate the airflow for optimum placement of air-conditioning outlets, freezers and doorways.
For that simple arithmetic use the calc on your mobile phone - you're not going to want to carry a TI or HP calc around just to add grocery bills.
Good point (Score:2)
[quote]It is well worth carrying a small laptop instead of a pocket calculator for all the added power you get, unless you're doing simple arithmetic.[/quote] No, it isn't. Unless your level of geekdom is over 9000, that is.
Absolutely. If I go down to the supermarket I might have to compare unit prices, total cash etc - so a small calculator in my pocket is a good idea. I am unlikely to come across anything needing a laptop's power or find it worth carrying one. At geek levels of 8500 or more you may well not be able to resist trying to optimise the queuing at checkouts or simulate the airflow for optimum placement of air-conditioning outlets, freezers and doorways.
For that simple arithmetic use the calc on your mobile phone - you're not going to want to carry a TI or HP calc around just to add grocery bills.
You're right, that's what I do usually. I do take a calculator if I am doing something like buying carpet and tiles and need a lot of calculations, its much more usable than my built-in phone calculator.
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[quote]It is well worth carrying a small laptop instead of a pocket calculator for all the added power you get, unless you're doing simple arithmetic.[/quote]
No, it isn't. Unless your level of geekdom is over 9000, that is.
For basic math use your goddamn mobile phone, not a HP or TI calc!
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Well, of course, but where did I say otherwise? I keep me HP48G on my desk at home.
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For basic math use your goddamn mobile phone
Two years of smartphone service cost far more than a TI or HP calculator plus two years of dumbphone service.
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Er, I wasnt aware you could do 3d graphing on LibreOffice calc, factor algebraic equations, solve for x, or any of the other basic things a good decent TI-82 equivalent can do (and those things are like 20 years old).
Octave appears to be a programming language, that is, that I cant simply plug in Y=3x+z^2 and get a graph. Hooray for reducing simplicity! Hooray for complexity for its own sake!
Seriously, it sounds like youre either trolling, or have never used a TI-82+ equivalent. They are easy enough for
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Er, I wasnt aware you could do 3d graphing on LibreOffice calc, factor algebraic equations, solve for x, or any of the other basic things a good decent TI-82 equivalent can do (and those things are like 20 years old).
Octave appears to be a programming language, that is, that I cant simply plug in Y=3x+z^2 and get a graph. Hooray for reducing simplicity! Hooray for complexity for its own sake!
Seriously, it sounds like youre either trolling, or have never used a TI-82+ equivalent. They are easy enough for a budding 7th grader to use, powerful enough for real world use, and have a quite nice BASIC programming function (which I credit for getting me into the world of computers). And honestly, I dont know what math class would allow you to bring a laptop in, or why its fair to compare a $100 (new) TI or HP calc to a $450 laptop.
There's not a lot that one of the pieces of software I listed can't do.
Octave requires 4 lines for a 3D plot
http://math.jacobs-university.de/oliver/teaching/iub/resources/octave/octave-intro/octave-intro.html#SECTION00052000000000000000 [jacobs-university.de]
But I LOVE the way you gibber on that I can't possibly have used a TI calculator having just dismissed Octave without doing a simple Google search. Way to be logically consistent.
There is a SHITLOAD of math software out there. Many of these pieces of software will overcome al
An environment that forbids small laptops (Score:2)
Calling what I listed "a bunch of software that turns a desktop computer into a desktop calculator" is about as asinine as you can get.
Then I must have misunderstood what you meant by "desktop calculator". You may have meant a four- or five-function. Please allow me to clarify my point: a desktop computer running Maxima or Octave or NumPy is confined to a desk.
It is well worth carrying a small laptop instead of a pocket calculator for all the added power you get
Unless you're in an environment that forbids possession of small laptops. Much of TI's market has to spend seven state-mandated hours a day in such an environment. In addition, a dedicated calculator starts the math application within one second of turning the power on, unlike (as I
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Sounds like a plan, please tell the administrators that I need to have a laptop for taking my exams....
MORON.
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>You'd know that if you ever held a machete you arrogant ass. But I somehow don't see an image of you walking through the jungle with a machete in one hand and your HP or TI calculator in the other even semi realistic.
It's called land surveying. Get out of your basement.
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BMO
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If you think you can toughen a laptop, with a 10+" screen, large keyboard, large LION battery, heatsinks, fans, and all, up to the same standard you can with a 2" by 4" calculator, you are sadly mistaken. Larger more complex devices are by nature harder to ruggedize, especially when the screen gets large enough to be able to flex and break.
Not to mention ruggedizing it (adding a solid steel frame to the screen, for example) would add quite a bit to the weight and cost, so all of a sudden we're talking abou
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If you think you can toughen a laptop, with a 10+" screen, large keyboard, large LION battery, heatsinks, fans, and all, up to the same standard you can with a 2" by 4" calculator, you are sadly mistaken. Larger more complex devices are by nature harder to ruggedize, especially when the screen gets large enough to be able to flex and break.
Not to mention ruggedizing it (adding a solid steel frame to the screen, for example) would add quite a bit to the weight and cost, so all of a sudden we're talking about a $1500 laptop weighing 3kg, vs a $100 calculator weighing 250 grams. And for what gain? To use an OS not designed for mathmatics, on a device with 1/50th of the battery life?
Last time I checked there were specialised laptops for the battlefield, carried by troops.
No calculator is going to allow you to check or fix mistakes with the ease that even the simplest spreadsheet software will. Punching in long tedious calculations by hand is not something anyone should do in this day and age.
Why try to build a better mouse trap? (Score:2)
I've said this a couple of times now but if manufacturers are so keen on not allowing the hacker community to do whatever they want with their property, why don't they just license the damn things? Seems to be a better way to get users to not tamper with the electronics (at least legally) and provides a legal recourse should they do so.
Outside of warranty, what incentive is there for a company like TI or Apple to continue to build better mouse traps when the hacker community usually just cracks it within d
They do license the damn things (Score:2)
I've said this a couple of times now but if manufacturers are so keen on not allowing the hacker community to do whatever they want with their property, why don't they just license the damn things?
Companies do "license the damn things", but sometimes only to other established companies. One example is Nintendo, which requires a dedicated secure office and a previous commercial game on another platform out of any licensee. And even when they do license to individuals, people complain about the $99 per year fee to run your own programs on your own hardware that Microsoft pioneered (App Hub) and Apple standardized (iPhone developer program).
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IANAL but if, for example, Apple says, "You aren't purchasing an iPhone. You're purchasing a license to use the iPhone. By using it, you agree not to jailbreak the phone. If you do, we'll take you to court and you will have to pay us $2000 and can not use any other Apple products for five years."
While not very customer friendly, I don't see the difference between this and constantly trying to outsmart the hackers.
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To properly license something, it needs to have periodical payments or something like that to make a proper distinction between a sale. You can't just sell something, and call it "licensing".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/11/28/us_court_ruling_nixes_software/ [theregister.co.uk]
Customer Abuse = Customer Refuse (Score:2)
This kind of behavior is why my wife got a HP 50G for her birthday, rather than the TI-92. As far as I know, HP doesn't care one whit about what you do with their calculators, just as long as you give them money for the initial purchase.
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You also can't take the TI-92 into exams.
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One of the things exams test is ability to solve certain kinds of problems on your own. If your calculator is too advanced, and can solve the problem for you, it nullifies the point of the exam.
Does anyone even use these any more? (Score:2)
What a scam by my college and TI.
Huh (Score:3)
So it's a programmable calculator, but users are not allowed to actually programmed it?
I think calculators started to such around the point where the target audience was students doing exams that impose certain restrictions on calculators, instead of engineers.
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s/programmed/program
s/such/suck
Biting the hand that feeds you (Score:2)
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Isn't there more profit in not despising customers? I mean, if the product is better people are more likely to want it and such...
Re:Biting the hand that feeds you (Score:4, Insightful)
Gamers, hackers and cheaters aren't their target customers. Schools are. TI loves schools. Hence it does everything to please them. Such as preventing tampering.
Spurious analogy time. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Disappointed (Score:4, Insightful)
Sharp EL-9000 (Score:2)
I own one of those, and calculators were *never* allowed in my avionics classes, besides 4-function ones
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:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, so then perform an integrity check at boot. If the checksums don't match, display a message for 10 seconds. Invigilators can then confirm that the examinee has a clean device.
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As a non-programmer, which the test creators and proctors likely are as well, here is my train of thought:
1) Cool. Good solution.
2) Wait, that means we have to check every calculator.
3) There were ~100 students taking the SAT/ACT tests when I took them. About 20-30 students in my low level math courses in college. Decent time sink to have each student turn on the calculator, wait for the checksum, verify it, move to the next student. Waiting for students to turn off their calculators because there will
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I read before of a guy making a program that fakes the boot sequence to get around that kind of check..
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we all did that in highschool.... the teacher would come around and reset each of our calculators, but we had an app that faked it so we wouldn't loose all the work we had been doing writing video games for the thing.
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Remove and reinsert the battery. After that I'm sure you'll get a real boot.
the Nspire CX and CX CAS have hard-installed Li ion batteries -- not easily removed
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
You have to check EVERY Calculator already to look for firmware revision. So how is this a problem? It's not like the older version added wrong, so running a older firmware will give me advantages that lazy test administrators will not bother to look at.
OH how about simply supplying the calculators for the test? Sounds like a better solution that all these highly educated nimrods cant seem to think of on their own.
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OH how about simply supplying the calculators for the test? Sounds like a better solution that all these highly educated nimrods cant seem to think of on their own.
This will only work if the school buys calculators for everyone at the start of the year that will be identical in operation to the ones handed out during exams. Else students risk having to spend the first part of an exam learning how to operate a new calculator.
Say $120 per calculator, plus $20 per year for service / replacements. Multiply by number of students at the high school.
Then add the exam calculators, which have to be either bought new or re-flashed and inspected before the exam (what if a last
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Have you seen tuition fees lately? $120 is a drop in the ocean compared to all the plasma TVs and sports stadiums.
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They cost 10 Euros where I live.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
In high-school I wrote an arbitrary problem approximating algorithm for the TI-82 in its horribly broken calculator basic. Also, we wrote applications to play solitare, reversi, tetris, and a really crappy overhead shooter without resorting to assembly.
If you have ANY ability to program your calculator exposed, you have zero test integrity. Anything less than that is delusional. Whether that's Ti-Calculator Basic or a more modern programming language doesn't really matter.
As another example, the TI-92 I had in College was banned from the SAT's for having a QWERTY keyboard, yet the TI-89's shared the same internals without a keyboard and were OK. The difference? You had to press the "Function" key to type with a QWERTY equivalent. It's security theater.
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In my high schools a solution you couldn't argue for was considered failed because it could have been calculated by a calculator.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why are we teaching children to do jobs that can be done by computers? Computers are terrible and math and really good at calculation -- why don't we divide the effort (and hence the instruction) along those lines.
I'm not saying we shouldn't teach children to do arithmetic, but there's a limited amount of math instruction time available, and I don't think we should waste it being sure Johnny can manually calculate large bits of long division instead of teaching him what division might actually accomplish.
If you want to be sure Johnny understands the calculation, have him write a program for his calculator that does it. Once he can do that he clearly understands the manipulation required so there's no reason to make him keep doing manually it when there's a $0.03 device that can do the same thing faster and more accurately.
To me this all seems equivalent to teaching kids to farm using ox-powered plows rather than tractors -- yes, it's important to understand how it works, but it's not important to be able to actually do it efficiently once you've got that understanding.
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it's important to understand how it works, but it's not important to be able to actually do it efficiently once you've got that understanding.
How else do you test whether a student really understands how math works, if not by a proctored test free of computational aids?
I owned multiple graphing calculators in high school and college, and always had simple programs for some of the most common tasks (e.g. quadratic formula), which were immensely useful for checking my work (and occasionally a useful shortcut
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
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As another example, the TI-92 I had in College was banned from the SAT's for having a QWERTY keyboard
Perhaps there's a reasoning behind that: programming a calculator without QWERTY is a rather hellish experience if you need to do it quickly, as in a test. So if the memory is cleared before the test, the TI-89 is fine while the 92 wouldn't be.
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LOL!
While there are 10-20 students in my maths classes at university, there are about 500 of us in the program, and all 500 of us sit the exams at the same time, in the same building, with approximately 2,500 others at exactly the same time, in exactly the same location.
Each proctor is in charge of monitoring about 100 students, which isn't hard since they keep their heads down, and there's a space of just under a meter in between each person to the next closest person.
So, while you think your time is bad,
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
And why should anyone trust that message? Can you be sure it was generated by the trusted firmware?
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What will stop a hacked calculator from displaying this message as well?
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When I took the SATs, you we were given a calculator. A few tests I took, you could only have non-graphing calculators.
I suppose they could do the same thing here and avoid the whole issue.
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Yeah. They have to dumb it down these days. They don't teach kids how to graph by hand and identify the key points (zeroes, inflections, maximum/minimum) by the function itself anymore
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How long does certification take? Because that may explain this: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/1996.png [xkcd.com]
I love my TI-89. I couldn't imagine doing too much without it. Yes I can do it all by hand, but it's much faster with the 89. Dec to Binary or Hex. Unit conversion (And you can give it weird inputs like how long to move x ft using m/s^2, etc). rref with large arrays to solve linear problems. (And I don't always have Matlab with me).
But some stuff takes forever to do. We have portable devices that are crackin
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There is no such thing as a tamper proof device. Any attempt to market such a device is fraudulent.
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i majored at university in mathematics and *never* used a calculator during exams. Something suggests examiners are doing it wrong.
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Math students don't deal with numbers. Often though, science students and other disciplines do.
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I majored in physics. After freshman level courses we were NEVER asked to calculate a number. Everything was derived symbolically and the answer to a problem was a formula. That's really the hard part after all; plugging in numbers and getting a numerical answer is trivial.
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If you hack a calculator to cheat on an exam, you deserve that advantage, IMO.
The person who implemented the hack, sure, but what of the thousands afterwards who do nothing more than install it?
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What about those using it for mathematics, physics, and many other subjects that have nothing to do with programming? Does being good at programming give you a free pass to cheat those as well?
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It's worse than that: In every college exam where I've been allowed a calculator so far, no one cared about the model of calculator. Their attitude is, time spent playing with the calculator, attempting to cheat or to exploit some advanced feature for an edge, is time wasted by not actually doing the math or physics you need to do. The exams where they would care, they just disallowed all calculators to make things easier.
Now, I barely hacked my calculator to help with the exam -- I just put a few physical
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
(OT) Your sig. (Score:2)
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
Okay, so a source-self-replicator is nice - it got me thinking - how about a self-replicator with an awareness of it's generation-count?
long x=0; char*f="long x=%u; char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,x+1,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,x+1,34,f,34);}
Each successive generation is identified by x
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Just think about it for a moment; if someone managed to deliberately or accidentally bypass the maths integrity checks they could actually divide by zero and the whole universe would collapse in on itself - this would really ruin everyone's day.
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Ti has a long history of screwing with homebrew apps, especially ASM apps.
They only started supporting ASM on their calcs when they couldn't stop zshell and fargo devs from getting the most out of their 85 and 92 calcs, and then the SDK was crippled with a stupid code signing scheme that limited code size, which the community hacked around.
As for their current offerings, I swear that Ti anymore builds their calcs based on high school teacher input instead of Math professors and scientist input. Teachers wan
Re:TI - dead technology... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would I want to buy a product from a company that so hates it's customers?
Two reasons: 1. If you don't buy one you can't do the homework and quizzes and thus fail the class. 2. If you pull out an Android device during downtime in class (even in flight mode) it gets confiscated by faculty, but if you pull out a TI product you're fine.
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And those models would be intended for...what, exactly? What purpose does a TI calculator serve these days that could not be better served by an Android phone, a tablet, or a netbook? Calculators today are for people taking tests who are prohibited from having connected or truly capable devices. They have no other purpose.
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What purpose does a TI calculator serve these days that could not be better served by an Android phone, a tablet, or a netbook?
It's specialized role as a calculator, of course. It's far cheaper, it's better at the role than the tools you mention, and it has much longer battery life.
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Calculator apps can be had for Androids, tablets, *and* netbooks. People are not going to spend money and cart around an extra piece of junk that's only a calculator. And they don't.
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Calculator apps can be had for Androids, tablets, *and* netbooks.
But which such device has 20 to 40 hotkeys for mathematical functions at the user's fingertips?
People are not going to spend money and cart around an extra piece of junk
...that's only a battery. How long does a TI product last on one set of four NiMH AAAs?
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Calculator apps can be had for Androids, tablets, *and* netbooks.
And they are less capable at that specialized role.
People are not going to spend money and cart around an extra piece of junk that's only a calculator. And they don't.
I always haul along a calculator (solar powered too). I don't have much less haul a smartphone or other gear you mentioned. It's only "junk" if you don't use it.
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.
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Not only that but enthusiast crowd actually works on actively harming the goals of main target audience (schools, doing only what it is designed to do and nothing else). As a result TI has no choice but to stop hacking by any means necessary.
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...which is why I was so surprised that not a single professor I've had so far who allows calculators has asked for a specific version, or even a specific company. HP is much kinder to enthusiasts, but no one even blinks when I bring a high-end HP model.
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Love doesn't sell calculators. Mandatory restrictions imposed by colleges sell calculators (at huge markups).
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For hackers, gamers and cheaters. None of whom are TI's target audience.
On the other hand it makes them more desirable for target audience, schools.