Lionel Debroux wrote:
We are clearly not supposed to create games. The CE is (officially, I mean ^^) set to become closer to what the Nspire has always been: a consumption platform, instead of a production platform. Needless to say, that's not the way to let students interested in programming. Meanwhile, Western countries keep lamenting that they can't fulfill demand for qualified STEM jobs...

Thanks, and sorry.

Then I totally misunderstood TI's reply in the first post. Smile
I thought we had to port / adapt our best asm games in Python.
Hey, I've been out of the loop for a while. Has anyone gotten code to run without the asm( function or apps?

I'm sure something could be done over the link port, but the thought of crashing the OS and having a basic program run as an ASM program would be so cool.

Edit:
Though, I guess this wouldn't really be a long term solution without TI's support.
thepenguin77 wrote:
I'm sure something could be done over the link port, but the thought of crashing the OS and having a basic program run as an ASM program would be so cool. (Also, sorry if this sort of talk isn't cool anymore)
Eeer, come find us on IRC.
Heh, sorry. Got a little overzealous.

I'm deeply saddened by the loss of asm though. Messing around with registers, ram addresses, and ports taught me so much about computers and it's really sad to me that kids in the future won't get the chance to do the same.

I guess things are a little different this time though, as this time we're completely locked out and regaining access defeats TI's entire security system.
I kind of think it's time to stop playing nice. If TI wants to basically bring the community's development efforts and interest to a grinding halt, it's time we start speaking to the same market they are trying to appease. The school boards. The teachers. Bring some of the best programs we've got, explain how millions of calculator users worldwide get their jump into computer science on these platforms and how the updates from TI are killing that ability and that cheating is a very small slice of a much larger pie that goes on with these calculators. This needs to be a coordinated, worldwide effort. Promoting software all over the world that the community has developed. Publish newsletters. Get the word out that TI is killing programming support. Encourage school boards, teachers, and students to pursue other calculators that support development. When TI sees its market turning to competitor's products, they'll rethink their decision real fast. Relying on TI's good faith with dual booting OS's, or developer calculators may seem nice on the surface, but our sucking up to TI has gotten us barely anything but repeated insult over the years.

I'll make this proposal, if TI is really interested in "some agreement" about this. Let TI distribute signing hashes to developers, kind of like Apple does for Apple developers. Those hashes can be used to sign the programs. When test mode is enabled, all unhashed programs are prevented from running or editing. This ensures that cheat notes and the like that aren't signed by a noted developer cannot be run, but games and other classroom aid tools that are signed by developers can still be run.
Unfortunately, you've bought into the same misdiagnosis that everybody has. Since Peter Balyta has rejected my letter, I think it's fair to conclude that the real intent is not to "minimize any security risks" but "to prioritize learning." What does "prioritize learning" mean?

It means "get rid of the !@#%^& games."

I have further thoughts on this which I'll post in an upcoming thread, which explains both the motivation behind this and why it will hurt students more in the long run---and why teachers like it that way. But that's a long essay that I can't attempt to write right now.
I'll write it for you :p Jk.

I would even propose calling TI's bluff on something. Write TI a letter, signed by a EVERY major calc development community - Cemetech, Omnimaga, Codewalrus (unity is important on this), informing them that if they do not revise their decision on C/asm, and implement exam security in a way that is conducive to teaching, learning, and doing programming, we the community will be designing, releasing and marketing our own calculator to compete with them. And if they do not walk it back.. actually follow through.

There is no action legally they could take to prevent this: it would be our own hardware and programming, no copying of names, symbols, anything. Free market, people can compete with whoever they want.
ACagliano wrote:
I would even propose calling TI's bluff on something.

Er, what bluff? They're dead-serious.

ACagliano wrote:
Write TI a letter, signed by a EVERY major calc development community - Cemetech, Omnimaga, Codewalrus (unity is important on this), informing them that if they do not revise their decision on C/asm, and implement exam security in a way that is conducive to teaching, learning, and doing programming, we the community will be designing, releasing and marketing our own calculator to compete with them. And if they do not walk it back.. actually follow through. . . . Free market, people can compete with whoever they want.

You're absolutely right! There are better and cheaper calculators out there, so what makes you think you're going to succeed where HP and Casio haven't? I guess NumWorks is successful though. But then why not just promote NumWorks in the US?
Well i mean you have a point there. Promoting a different calculator that is better for development is a viable approach. But what I think is the problem is the marketing approach. Thus far, calculators have been exclusively marketed to schools as *math* tools. And due to the programming community's apparently futile efforts to stay in TI's good graces, our own marketing has been minimal as to the benefit of programming, and essentially slaved to TI's message. To my knowledge, T^3 and Makers Faire are the only public campaigns we're engaged in. If TI is going to diverge it's future from the future of the community or programming, it is time for Cemetech and the other forums to pursue a more aggressive marketing strategy as to the merits of calculator programming and why it is a vital part of early education.

Whether this involves simply marketing our products more, and promoting non-TI products, or developing our own calculator hardware to compete... something needs to be done to send the message to TI that we mean business, because apparently the "letters of concern approach" has fallen on deaf ears.

Furthermore we need to not let ourselves be stopped by feelings of "this is pointless", "it won't help", "it's to hard, noone will want to do it" because feelings like this is what lets corporate giants do whatever they want.
ACagliano wrote:
Well i mean you have a point there. Promoting a different calculator that is better for development is a viable approach. But what I think is the problem is the marketing approach. Thus far, calculators have been exclusively marketed to schools as *math* tools. And due to the programming community's apparently futile efforts to stay in TI's good graces, our own marketing has been minimal as to the benefit of programming, and essentially slaved to TI's message. To my knowledge, T^3 and Makers Faire are the only public campaigns we're engaged in. If TI is going to diverge it's future from the future of the community or programming, it is time for Cemetech and the other forums to pursue a more aggressive marketing strategy as to the merits of calculator programming and why it is a vital part of early education.

Time to boycott then. There are plenty of competitors (Casio, HP, NumWorks just for the ones with exam modes) that do not throw their communities under the bus. Texas Instruments will not care unless their bottom line hurts.

ACagliano wrote:
Whether this involves simply marketing our products more, and promoting non-TI products, or developing our own calculator hardware to compete... something needs to be done to send the message to TI that we mean business, because apparently the "letters of concern approach" has fallen on deaf ears.

Furthermore we need to not let ourselves be stopped by feelings of "this is pointless", "it won't help", "it's to hard, noone will want to do it" because feelings like this is what lets corporate giants do whatever they want.

Remember, friends don't let friends buy TI calculators.
You also have to take in account the educational market. At least here in the United States, most of the middle/high schools use a Texas Instruments calculator. In Europe I know that Texas Instruments doesn't actually have a complete monopoly though, so you can try there.

On a side note though, what other regions mainly use graphing calculators?
De2290 wrote:
On a side note though, what other regions mainly use graphing calculators?

... All of them?

I'm not saying every highschool student has one nor that every country uses them, but:
  • North America is (in)famous for its TI monopoly.
  • South America seems to have a HP Prime stronghold somewhere, based on TI-Planet's document converter usage.
  • Europe has Casio and NumWorks revving up.
  • Asia has weird stuff like this (https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=110&t=21691).
  • Australia has ridiculously overpriced calculators.
boricj wrote:
  • Australia has ridiculously overpriced calculators everything.
Fixed.
DrDnar wrote:
boricj wrote:
  • Australia has ridiculously overpriced calculators everything.
Fixed.
Am Australian, can confirm.
JamesV wrote:
Am Australian, can confirm.

It's like the one thing I know about Australia because every Australian complains about it.
Hahaha yes very true - most things are released here last and we pay more for the privilege.

Related to the topic at hand would it be a good idea to compile a list of projects that are now officially swinging in the breeze? There are a lot of promising projects out there and might be a good way of measuring the future impact of this decision.
In order to summarize all the events that have happened over the past month, I made a video that puts the vast majority of the information all in one video! Take a look, it contains a lot of awesome information you likely didn't know about!
TheLastMillennial wrote:
In order to summarize all the events that have happened over the past month, I made a video that puts the vast majority of the information all in one video! Take a look, it contains a lot of awesome information you likely didn't know about!

Now lets watch LTT copyright claim the video for the 5 second clip of the WAN show Laughing
So, judging by the article, TI wants us to give up ASM/C functionality and will in exchange, add python as an option for programming. I've noticed that there's a revision of the ti 84 plus ce with python support, and a "python edition" ti 83 premium ce. So, to me, it sounds like only some calculators can use python. Would that mean that if someone with outdated hardware updated, that they would only have ti-basic, or python would run like absolute #@$%? (I think that Kerm Martian mentioned that it already does, though?) Sorry if my question is stupid. Neutral

EDIT: My hardware is probably outdated (has an ā€œLā€ at the end of the serial)
There's an unpopulated area for an ARM coprocessor in all modern TI-84 Plus CEs (i.e., Revision M and later), so if you don't have that ARM coprocessor, no software update is going to give you Python. I hypothesize that TI is going to start populating this in some Python-enabled US TI-84 Plus CE in the next year or so, but I currently have no confirmation that this is the case.
  
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