Why TI Calc Coders Should Abandon the Nspire CX

[Christopher Mitchell]

I am Christopher "Kerm Martian" Mitchell, and I founded Cemetech, a
pillar of the TI programming community, over a decade ago. In recent
years, community members have become more and more concerned with TI's
lackadaisical attitude towards the community, particularly in its
attempts to block any kind of nontrivial programming capabilities on
the TI-Nspire, either in the form of BASIC, ASM, or C. I recently
wrote a short editorial about the current state of TI and the graphing
calculator scene, and a half-dozen of my members suggested that the
members of this group might both find the article interesting and be
able to offer some feedback. Feel free to take a look at some of the
eighty-odd comments that have accrued in the past eighteen hours,
mostly from other programmers voicing their concerns and telling the
story of how their TI calculators first got them interested in
programming, computer science, or engineering. The link to the
discussion is here; enjoy the read, and of course please provide any
feedback.

http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5861
-------

For the past thirteen years of my life, I have been a dedicated,
vehement member of the TI calculator coding community. I first started
writing TI-BASIC on a school TI-82 in sixth grade, and got my very own
TI-83 for Christmas in seventh grade. I developed my TI-BASIC skills,
released hundreds of programs, then began to teach myself z80 ASM as I
started high school. I have maintained a hobbyist website (Cemetech,
http://www.cemetech.net) and community centered around programming
TI's calculators for well over a decade, now going strong with over
1,700 members. It should be a shock for a pillar of the TI programming
community to therefore endorse a calculator from the Enemy, the
nefarious Casio, one of the two perennial underdogs in the world of
graphing calculators. I believe that tens of thousands if not hundreds
of thousands of students have been introduced to programming and
technical fields by experimenting with their calculators and learning
to program with these tools, and I believe TI is no longer fulfilling
its social responsibility to fill this niche.

Several months ago, Casio released their new calculator, the Prizm,
the first graphing calculator in over a decade to include a color LCD.
It sports 16MB of Flash memory, ample RAM, and the aforementioned
384x216 pixel LCD. TI's first entry into the graphing calculator space
in over five years had been the TI-Nspire, an "aircraft-carrier sized"
device crippled by no programming ability and a feature set pandering
to standardized tests, not to students. Fast-forward to late February
2011, when TI announced a color LCD refresh of the Nspire line, to be
known as the TI-Nspire CX. Like many of my programming compatriots, I
was excited. Perhaps TI had seen the light of their responsibility to
inspire students to become mathematicians, computer scientists, and
electrical engineers. Sadly, the Nspire CX follows the steady decline
of TI's graphing calculators started with the first Nspire. If you're
a TI calculator enthusiast, you should ignore the Nspire CX and get a
Casio Prizm; read on for why.

The Casio Prizm is an attractive calculator, following current gadget
design trends with a glossy black plastic case and chrome accents. To
hands accustomed to holding a TI calculator, the build feels equally
solid, and the square, smooth buttons are a pleasure to press. I got
my Prizm two days ago, and I have continued to discover new features
as i have explored it. The interface is initially unfamiliar to a
TI-83+/84+ coder, hearkening more to the layout of the TI-89's
software, with a main menu that leads to the math mode, graphing mode,
programming tools, spreadsheet, document, and drawing applications,
and more. The color screen is of course the most novel feature of the
calculator, but the software is written to use the color screen richly
and effectively rather than as a novelty. Casio in fact has many years
of experience with color calculators; they released a four-color
calculator that sadly saw only limited success in 1996, fifteen years
ago. From a technical standpoint, it has a powerful 116MHz SH3
processor underclocked to 58MHz, 16MB of Flash ROM, and 2MB (or 61KB,
depending on your accounting) of RAM. I am especially excited that it
has the same pair of ports as most recent TI calculators, namely a
miniUSB port and a 2.5mm stereo serial jack. I look forward to porting
CALCnet 2.2, my TI calculator networking protocol, to the devices. The
specs still on the same level as PDAs from ten years ago, but
nonetheless respectable for a graphing calculator.

Of course, for a company with a fraction of the development budget and
the reach of Texas Instruments, there are bound to be a few hiccups of
a new calculator. Most notably, community members have complained that
despite the Prizm's 58MHz, the BASIC interpreter is painfully slow. To
the best of my research, BASIC programmers seems unable to draw in
more than eight colors, and TI-BASIC coders will be disappointed to
find that the Prizm has inferior drawing features to the TI-83+/84+
series. Even with all these limitations, however, the BASIC flavor on
the Prizm is far, far superior to the pitiful and rudimentary
capabilities of the TI-Nspire. As stated, sources have confirmed that
the Nspire CX will not improve on the programming environment of the
existing Nspires, making the color screen and sleeker case the only
reason to purchase an Nspire CX.

And this brings me to the crux of my argument about why I, you, the
rest of the community, and all your friends should buy Prizms. It's
not that it's a vastly superior device, but to paraphrase a smart
Cemetech member from IRC, "TI has basically become a monopoly in
recent years" that cares only about its bottom line, its position as
the foremost maker of calculators for standardized tests, and its
relationship with educators. It no longer cares about one of the major
groups that provides it with uncountable free publicity. Without the
many tens of thousands of calculator programs ranging from science and
math programs to shells to utilities to impressive games, many
students would use their calculators far less, and would have no
incentive to upgrade to TI's latest models. However, I feel that even
without this monetary aspect, TI has a social responsibility to
support developers and coders. The world is rapidly moving towards a
phase where technology is an integral part of every facet of everyday
life from waking to sleep, and this technological progress must be
supported by successive generations that are enthusiastic about
engineering, programming, and invention. I have talked to countless
individuals in my role as a community figure over the years who cite
their TI calculator, its programming abilities, and the TI programming
community for getting them into technology fields, to technology-
related majors, and finally to technical careers. TI is taking the
unsupportable step of trying to actively prevent any sort of
development on their devices, cripping the BASIC variant on the
Nspires beyond recognition, taking legal action against community
members who try to expand the programmability even of the tried-and-
true TI-83+/SE and TI-84+/SE series that has relatively unrestricted
programming capabilities, and fighting a "jailbreaking" arms race with
the community in its TI-Nspire line akin to Apple's attempts to keep
developers from freely using its platform. For a company that makes a
livelihood off of selling programs and games, Apple's oft-critized
attempts make worlds more sense than a powerful educational technology
company trying to stop students taking their first steps into the
world of software engineering from experimenting with and learning
from these powerful yet ubiquitous tools. The bottom line is that
unlike TI, "Casio isn't actively trying to development for [the
Prizm]" and its other calculators, and therein lies the rub. Although
it hasn't released an official SDK, sufficient tools exist to enable
hardware hackers to figure out the device, and indeed many among the
Casio and TI communities have already begun the effort. Programs can
be loaded onto the Prizm painlessly; unlike TI calculators with their
complex and terribly-bugging TI Connect software, the Prizm appears as
a mass storage device. Even the OS is easier to replace; TI's devices
are locked to require a mathematical task taking millenia of computer
time to complete before the code that is needed to replace the OS can
be cracked.

Sadly, the Casio Prizm will to a great degree of certainty see a much
lower distribution and orders of magnitude fewer sales than the new
Nspire CX, which is a terrible shame, and not based on the merit of
the devices or the company. Many schools or school districts issue a
blanket requirement to use TI calculators, which TI has taken years to
support and encourage by pandering to schools and educators, itself
not damnable, but at the total exclusion of any interest in the
student, the curious mind, the budding technologist. I feel that this
is an irresponsible corporate attitude, and though I don't expect it
to change any time in the near future, I call on Texas Instruments to
turn a new leaf, to take a hard look at their role in the educational
community, and to add programming capabilites back into the Nspire
calculators and start once again working with and holding a dialog
with their loyal community of programming enthusiasts.

[Eric Findlay]

Good article, but there is much that I have to disagree with.

Firstly, as someone who did become interested in programming through the TI83, and as someone who web on to do a Computer Science degree in university, I have to say that I love and prefer the new programming language that is on the TI-Nspire calculators. Why? Well, I feel that it gives the students interested in programming a much better sense of what real coding is like. The Nspire language is much closer to the "standard" languages of Java and C in terms of syntax. It is also easier to teach good coding practices such as indentation and naming conventions. The library capabilities promote modulization, code efficiency, procedural calls, reuse of code, and also removes from view cryptic files like "thetaABC" which is a subroutine for a single program you rarely use.

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[Nelson Sousa]

Your editorial claims as facts things are are just not true:
- TI is a monopoly: maybe so in the US, not as such in other parts of
the world. I don't know current exact figures but, and although TI is,
to the best of my knowledge, the market leader on most European
countries, the market is much more balanced and Casio is the leader in
some countries;
- Prizm's superior specs: 116MHz CPU underclocked to run at 58 Mhz, 16
Mb of ROM and 62 Mb of RAM (I assume this was a typo and you meant
62Mb or 61Mb depending on how you count) ? Nspire's CPU is running at
some 100 MHz, the CX has 100Mb total storage space, 64 Mb RAM. How is
Prizm superior? LCD: the form factor is different, Nspire's is higher,
Prizm's is wider; the Prizm has a higher number of pixels by 10%; and
they tie in number of colors, 65k for both. Except in number of pixels
I don't see the advantage for Prizm on the specs alone, unlike what
you claim.

The rest is a matter of opinion, you are entitled to yours, I have a
different one; but:
- how is centering a product in standardized testing, that students in
most countries need to take, ignoring students?
- how is Prizm such a better choice if in your own words its "BASIC
interpreter is painfully slow"?
- how is it that when the programming community got around the
limitations and hacked the Nspire and built Ndless, a gameboy emulator
and gameboy game ports were amongst the first things to be developped?
I see very little effort in creating "student oriented" applications
and a lot of effort in creating more and more ports of games, 1st
person shooters, rpgs, etc.
- how is it that TI calculators have such a high importance in
learning how to program, being in C, assembly or whatever language,
and yet I never heard of any university computer programming courses
that use calculators (and I know more than a few). I'm sorry, I fail
to see where that importance lies.
- how is it that with all that non existant programming power on the
Nspire rich content has been created with little or no programming at
all? I never complained about Nspire's lack of programming power.
Instead, I built a Periodic Table and a 3D geometry application
amongst many others (feel free to download them, they're at
www.nelsonsousa.pt). You may also see the works of Steve Arnold, Marc
Garneau, John Hanna, Sean Bird and others and see what kind of thing
that crippled programming allows us to do when we think out of the box
for a moment and start to build instead of complaining.

From what I hear, although I never tried one, the Prizm seems to be a
great calculator. So is the Nspire.

Cheers,
Nelson

[Eric Findlay]

*sigh*

Accidentally hit send.  Where was I?

In terms of teaching/learning programming, the Nspire is actually a much better tool.  Furthermore, the Nspire much better represents the concept of functions, parameters, arguments, and return values than the 83/84 did.

Sure, it doesn't have the ability to draw anymore (but I never used that much), but now we have much more powerful capabilities: interaction between program/function, graph, and spreadsheet; catching and handling errors (ex: div by 0); again, libraries.  Sure, there's a bit more of a learning curve, but in my opinion, it's worth it, and the learner will be much better off for it.

I also noticed that you said the Casio is a little on the slow side when executing code.  The Nspire does not have this problem.  It's quite fast, so why would I choose something slower?  It's like saying "I could buy a Windows 7 computer with an Intel i7 processor, but I'd rather get an IBM 286 because I prefer the capabilities of ANSI.sys in DOS.  It's a little slower, but it's worth it because I can move the cursor around on the screen."

Also, you say "TI has basically become a monopoly in

recent years that cares only about its bottom line, its position as
the foremost maker of calculators for standardized tests, and its

relationship with educators."  Most of that is probably true, but I don't see it as a bad thing (okay, maybe the bottom line thing, if true).  Texas Instruments is a company that operates mainly in North America, creating calculators for educational use.  They're not toys, which many of the 83/84s have become, they are tools.

If TI were to ignore the rules for standardized tests, no students would buy their calculators.  In fact, as an educator, I would tell my students not to, since I believe they need to be very familiar with their calculators when going into a test.

And if TI ignored the opinions of educative, the same thing would likely happen.  In fact, the Nspire is a much stronger pedagogical tool than the 83/84, as it promotes multiple representations, and is accessible to several different types of learners.  Not bad for a company that makes educational tools.

Finally, as a frequenter of ticalc.org, I appreciate he hard work that many people have put into their programs, however, as a programmer, I, personally, would not want someone changing the code I had written.  Not only is it a breach of the terms of use agreement, but it also those kinds of programs lead to all sorts of warranty issues.  The calculator has been programmed to work in a very specific way, and if someone downloads a program that alters the OS, and it's not perfect and breaks the unit, who do they want to fix it?  TI.  And as someone who has worked in customer service before, it just take up time the reps could be using to help people with real problems.

This is also not to mention the people who do it do malicious reasons...corporate espionage, viruses, etc.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Omnicalc, Symbolic, and other prgms/apps that take advantage of the 83/84's loopholes.  I'm just saying I understand where TI (and Apple) is coming from in this decision, and I don't fault them for it.

I still think the Nspire is a much better tool than the 83/84, and I'm going to stick with it.

  --Eric F.

On Mar 6, 2011, at 3:50 PM, Christopher Mitchell <kermm...@gmail.com> wrote:

[hastern]

sorry, dude. you go into my teal deer pile.

I like the Nspire because it's an effective tool in my math classes.
for anything beyond trivial intro to programming concepts, there are
better, non-handheld tools on the market.

On Mar 6, 6:50 pm, Christopher Mitchell <kermmart...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am Christopher "Kerm Martian" Mitchell, and I founded Cemetech, a
> pillar of the TI programming community, over a decade ago.  In recent
> years, community members have become more and more concerned with TI's
> lackadaisical attitude towards the community, particularly in its
> attempts to block any kind of nontrivial programming capabilities on

> the TI-Nspire, blah blah blah blah blah etc.

[Christopher Mitchell]

Hastern,

First, you could at least pretend you took the time to read the post in question, I think. Second, I agree that there are, but the problem is that many students to not have access to such tools, books, lessons, etc.  Almost every student is forced to purchase a graphing calculator at some point in their career, at least in the United States, and the TI-83/84+ series gave students who wouldn't otherwise have exposure to any programming classes or tools something with which to experiment.

Christopher

[hastern]

Au contraire. I think it was much more effective pretending I DIDN'T
read.


On Mar 6, 10:17 pm, Christopher Mitchell <christop...@cemetech.net>
wrote:

> Hastern,
>
> First, you could at least pretend you took the time to read the post in

> question, I think. ....

[Lionel Debroux]

Nelson,

> Your editorial claims as facts things are are just not true:
> - TI is a monopoly: maybe so in the US, not as such in other parts of
> the world. I don't know current exact figures but, and although TI is,
> to the best of my knowledge, the market leader on most European
> countries, the market is much more balanced and Casio is the leader in
> some countries;

Well, TI has been the market leader for a long time, and behaves, in
some ways, as a monopoly...
One easy example is mistreatment of users, which TI "can" afford because
they're a monopoly. They don't even feel like fixing bugs that yield
incorrect results, crash the calculator in normal operation and break
programs.
Several 10+-year-old bugs remain on both the TI-68k series and the
TI-Z80 series. And they even add bugs to the pile: OS 2.53MP for 84+
breaks programs and crash the calculator in normal operation; 2.55MP
adds marginal new functionality, expands the PTT mode, and does not
fix the most troublesome bug. That's a big fat middle finger sent
to us customers.

> - Prizm's superior specs: 116MHz CPU underclocked to run at 58 Mhz, 16
> Mb of ROM and 62 Mb of RAM (I assume this was a typo and you meant
> 62Mb or 61Mb depending on how you count) ? Nspire's CPU is running at
> some 100 MHz, the CX has 100Mb total storage space, 64 Mb RAM. How is
> Prizm superior? LCD: the form factor is different, Nspire's is higher,
> Prizm's is wider; the Prizm has a higher number of pixels by 10%; and
> they tie in number of colors, 65k for both. Except in number of pixels
> I don't see the advantage for Prizm on the specs alone, unlike what
> you claim.

I fail to see where you read, in Christopher's message, a statement
about the Prizm having specs superior _to the Nspire (CX)'s specs_ ?
And it's a fact that the Prizm has specs superior to the TI-Z80 series,
the TI-68k series, and most (if not all) Casio calc series - which is
truly (and obviously - Christopher _does_ know the hardware specs of
the Nspire) what he was comparing the Prizm to, on the hardware specs
front.

> The rest is a matter of opinion, you are entitled to yours, I have a
> different one; but:
> - how is centering a product in standardized testing, that students in
> most countries need to take, ignoring students?

I suggest you, and everybody else, to browse the "we made it to XKCD"
discussion again,
https://groups.google.com/group/tinspire/browse_thread/thread/2978472efdd30e01/

More precisely for this paragraph:
"
(Ross)
> Well, I haven't fully read every reply so far, so I hope that this
> hasn't already been said, but I have a simple solution that TI
> could/should have used when they first released the TI-Nspire:
> Allow for their to be ASM/Flash/C programs on the calculator, but
> turn off that functionality in the Press to Test mode.
(myself)
Indeed, I think that most agree that this would have been a good middle
ground between L's and Cs, in -TJ's terminology.
"

The Nspire (CAS) (CX) is precisely _too_ centered on standardized
testing... Capping the functionality in _normal operation mode_ to a
sub-par BASIC is not good, in the opinion of many members of the open
development community.
It's highly unlikely that we'd be currently discussing if the Nspire
had
1) a normal operation mode with proper BASIC programming, including
I/O functions that have been built in many programmable graphing
calculators for 15+ years but have been missing from the Nspire since
the beginning;
2) a testing mode, where this capability _can_ be disabled in case
someone feels that it's really important to disable it.

> - how is Prizm such a better choice if in your own words its "BASIC
> interpreter is painfully slow"?

Perhaps slow is better than none ?
The Prizm does have the I/O functions that TI remains unwilling to
provide.

> - how is it that when the programming community got around the
> limitations and hacked the Nspire and built Ndless, a gameboy emulator
> and gameboy game ports were amongst the first things to be developped?
> I see very little effort in creating "student oriented" applications
> and a lot of effort in creating more and more ports of games, 1st
> person shooters, rpgs, etc.

IIRC, you already raised this point in a previous discussion, and I
already showed why things are that way...
Remember: games, as a special case of programs that don't _require_
integration and intaction with the OS, are obviously _much_ easier to
do without official documentation than math programs.
Once you know how to write to the screen, read from the keyboard, and
read/write some files (for the program loader), you're set for games.
Not so for math programs, and obviously so ;)

On both the TI-68k and TI-Z80 platforms, besides third-party reverse-
engineering (which began before TI's help for TI-68k calcs and TI-Z80
calcs), TI released, more than ten years ago, some documentation about
a number of system variables, data structures and system calls
(BCALLs, ROM_CALLs) for manipulating math data / expressions.
Let's be honest, TI's documentation, even if incomplete, helped both
normal usage and further reverse-engineering.
On TI-68k/AMS, TI even gradually expanded the feature set accessible
to C/ASM programs - even if they forgot, or neglected, to export some
of them that are arguably useful (e.g., but not limited to, push_xor,
push_arclen, push_trig_expand, push_trig_collect, all AMS 2.08+
auxiliary trig functions) as ROM_CALLs.
See https://github.com/debrouxl/gcc4ti/commits/next-doc .

On the Nspire platform, TI has released nothing, and it's extremely
hard to find the necessary information by ourselves, since reverse-
engineering an OS as huge as the Nspire OS is, is *much* harder than
reverse-engineering the TI-Z80 OS and the TI-68k OS.

You can keep complaining about the making of C/ASM games instead of
C/ASM math programs, but it's very easy to explain, and the blame lies
with the manufacturer. And we'll keep rebutting you.

> - how is it that TI calculators have such a high importance in
> learning how to program, being in C, assembly or whatever language,
> and yet I never heard of any university computer programming courses
> that use calculators (and I know more than a few). I'm sorry, I fail
> to see where that importance lies.

You're completely missing the point - once again ;)
As Christopher outlined in a later mail:

"and the TI-83/84+ series gave students who wouldn't otherwise have
exposure to any programming classes or tools something with which to
experiment."

We're obviously not talking about university students, because for
those, as you certainly know, in a number of countries, calculator is
an under-used tool at best, a forbidden tool in tests at worst.
We're talking about high-schoolers.
Christopher, I and thousands of others who now make programs for a
living, got their first exposure to programming on calculators - or
at least, used them as a transportable tool on which they started
programming on a regular basis.
The calculators were mostly TI calcs, since 1) they're the market
leader and (*because*, in fact) 2) their calcs used to be more
programmable and moddable than the contemporary Casio models, and
easier to use, in the opinion of many persons, than HP's 48-49 series.

I'll grant you that this aspect is becoming less important nowadays,
because students have now more platforms in their reach than they
had ten years ago (smartphones, netbooks, etc).
However, older calculator models are bringing an aspect that keeps
being important, even with the increase in computational power:
efficiency and programming in native(ly-compiled) languages.

> - how is it that with all that non existant programming power on
> the Nspire rich content has been created with little or no
> programming at all?

Please quit being silly and behave as a grown-up...
We're not saying that there's "non existant programming power on
the Nspire", because that's *obviously* not true. We're saying that
it's sub-par compared to most programmable graphing calculators
released in the past 15+ years, and that this is bad for some
reasons, even if it's not as bad as it could have been 5-10 years
ago, as I outlined in my previous paragraph.

> I never complained about Nspire's lack of programming power.
> Instead, I built a Periodic Table and a 3D geometry application
> amongst many others (feel free to download them, they're at
> www.nelsonsousa.pt). You may also see the works of Steve Arnold,
> Marc Garneau, John Hanna, Sean Bird and others and see what
> kind of thing that crippled programming allows us to do when we
> think out of the box for a moment

"thinking out of the box for a moment" is an understatement for
"spending time working around artificial limitations"...
You could do better, with little additional (or even less) effort,
with a better language - as simple as that.

> and start to build instead of complaining.

You're being disrespectful.
Christopher would want to build some non-math and math programs
in C/ASM for the Nspire, because he would like to be able to use
the full power of the hardware and software (the way he has been
doing for years on the TI-Z80 calcs) - but he cannot due to lack
of documentation. IOW, he cannot due to TI's bloody fault.

Lionel.

[Nelson Sousa]

Are you serious??? It's easier to learn how to code on a calculator because there aren't enough resources available? 

--

Nelson

[Lionel Debroux]

Nelson,

> > First, you could at least pretend you took the time to read the post in
> > question, I think. Second, I agree that there are, but the problem is
> > that many students to not have access to such tools, books, lessons, etc.
> > Almost every student is forced to purchase a graphing calculator at
> > some point in their career, at least in the United States, and the
> > TI-83/84+ series gave students who wouldn't otherwise have exposure to
> > any programming classes or tools something with which to experiment.

> Are you serious??? It's easier to learn how to code on a calculator
> because there aren't enough resources available?

Er, where exactly do you parse such a statement ("easier to learn") in
Christopher's mail ?

I can't help but thinking - and this time, I'll state it - that it's not
the first time you fail at understanding other persons' points, and it's
not the first time you misrepresent their posts and opinions either.
In fact, if I had known that Christopher planned on posting his letter
here, I'd have dissuaded him, precisely because of your behaviour in
previous episodes...

Lionel.

[Nelson Sousa]

I'll try to keep everything in context, as I don't want to create a
too long thread.

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 10:10, Lionel Debroux <debroux...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, TI has been the market leader for a long time, and behaves, in
> some ways, as a monopoly...

Matter of opinion, not fact. Either it's indeed a monopoly or close to
it, as it is in SOME countries, and this is a matter of fact, or it
isn't, as happens in a lot of countries and this too is a matter of
fact. Classifying their behaviour as monopoly-like is a matter of
opinion. You're entitled to yours, I'm entitled to mine.

> One easy example is mistreatment of users, which TI "can" afford because
> they're a monopoly. They don't even feel like fixing bugs that yield
> incorrect results, crash the calculator in normal operation and break
> programs.

Simply not true. Bugs exist in every platform as you may very well
know. Nspire's bugs have been fixed, I know of half a dozen of them.
Some I reported, others I learn about and found them patched in the
following release. Not all are fixed, not even close to that and one
may blame TI for not fixing bugs fast enough, but that's a totally
different matter. And, given Casio's update frequency, which is much
lower than TI's, I'd risk saying that Casio is even more disrespectul
of their users, by your claim.

> I fail to see where you read, in Christopher's message, a statement
> about the Prizm having specs superior _to the Nspire (CX)'s specs_ ?

The whole post was a direct critique to the Nspire and a presentation
of the Prizm as a better alternative.

> And it's a fact that the Prizm has specs superior to the TI-Z80 series,
> the TI-68k series, and most (if not all) Casio calc series

So are the Nspire's.

> The Nspire (CAS) (CX) is precisely _too_ centered on standardized
> testing... Capping the functionality in _normal operation mode_ to a
> sub-par BASIC is not good, in the opinion of many members of the open
> development community.

Yes, in their opinion. With which I respectfully disagree. I hope you
respectfully disagree with mine and we leave this as is. It's not the
first time we have this discussion

> 2) a testing mode, where this capability _can_ be disabled in case
> someone feels that it's really important to disable it.

In some countries press-to-test mode is not relevant to authorize or
not a calculator model. The authorized models are decided based on the
specifications, now whether there are or not special modes that limit
functionality in given circumstances. Examples: Portugal and US.

>> - how is Prizm such a better choice if in your own words its "BASIC
>> interpreter is painfully slow"?
> Perhaps slow is better than none ?

Please see below your comment about the existing/non-existing
programming power of the Nspire.

> IIRC, you already raised this point in a previous discussion, and I
> already showed why things are that way...
> Remember: games, as a special case of programs that don't _require_
> integration and intaction with the OS, are obviously _much_ easier to
> do without official documentation than math programs.

How are games _much_ easier to do??? Even more, in an obvious
manner??? Games are all but easy to code.

> Once you know how to write to the screen, read from the keyboard, and
> read/write some files (for the program loader), you're set for games.
> Not so for math programs, and obviously so ;)

Absolutely false. And obviously so.

> On both the TI-68k and TI-Z80 platforms, besides third-party reverse-
> engineering (which began before TI's help for TI-68k calcs and TI-Z80
> calcs),

It started around 1993/1994 with Magnus Hagander and the Z-Shell for
the TI-85. I was around back then. No disagreement here, just adding
more precise info.

TI released, more than ten years ago, some documentation about
> a number of system variables, data structures and system calls
> (BCALLs, ROM_CALLs) for manipulating math data / expressions.
> Let's be honest, TI's documentation, even if incomplete, helped both
> normal usage and further reverse-engineering.
> On TI-68k/AMS, TI even gradually expanded the feature set accessible
> to C/ASM programs - even if they forgot, or neglected, to export some
> of them that are arguably useful (e.g., but not limited to, push_xor,
> push_arclen, push_trig_expand, push_trig_collect, all AMS 2.08+
> auxiliary trig functions) as ROM_CALLs.
> See https://github.com/debrouxl/gcc4ti/commits/next-doc .
>

Yes, they released documentation. And, again, despite having all the
documentation available, people created almost exclusively games.

> On the Nspire platform, TI has released nothing, and it's extremely
> hard to find the necessary information by ourselves, since reverse-
> engineering an OS as huge as the Nspire OS is, is *much* harder than
> reverse-engineering the TI-Z80 OS and the TI-68k OS.

Reverse-engineering is illegal per the license agreement in most
countries. Namely, it's illegal in the US, France and Portugal, unless
you do a clean-room reverse engineering, which needs to be proven and
has never been.

> You can keep complaining about the making of C/ASM games instead of
> C/ASM math programs, but it's very easy to explain, and the blame lies
> with the manufacturer. And we'll keep rebutting you.

It's not easy to explain; it's not obvious where the blame lies. And
you haven't rebutted any fact I pointed out, just stated your
opinions, which are in total disagreement with mine. But, it's a
matter of opinion, not fact.

> You're completely missing the point - once again ;)
> As Christopher outlined in a later mail:
> "and the TI-83/84+ series gave students who wouldn't otherwise have
> exposure to any programming classes or tools something with which to
> experiment."
> We're obviously not talking about university students, because for
> those, as you certainly know, in a number of countries, calculator is
> an under-used tool at best, a forbidden tool in tests at worst.
> We're talking about high-schoolers.

Don't know where you see that obvious information. It's all but obvious.
1. It's not obvious for me that someone that founded Cemetech and has
been around for 10 years (his own words) is in high school. I hardly
think so;
2. It's not obvious that in most countries calculators are not used or
under-used at a college/university level, my experience tells me
otherwise, it takes all kinds;
3. Given that my email was a reply to his first email, I fail to see
where info he provided on a latter email can invalidate the argument I
made based on what he said previously.

> Christopher, I and thousands of others who now make programs for a
> living, got their first exposure to programming on calculators - or
> at least, used them as a transportable tool on which they started
> programming on a regular basis.

Guess what, I code for a living! And I feel absolutely no need to use
a calculator to code yet another port of Zelda. I understand how I
could feel the will to, but not the need. So, if you want to re-state
your argument and say "programmers WANT to use asm on the Nspire",
fine. But there's no NEED for it.

>> - how is it that with all that non existant programming power on
>> the Nspire rich content has been created with little or no
>> programming at all?
> Please quit being silly and behave as a grown-up...
> We're not saying that there's "non existant programming power on
> the Nspire", because that's *obviously* not true.

Please read above your comment about the Basic interpreter on the
Nspire, where you say "slow is better than none".

> "thinking out of the box for a moment" is an understatement for
> "spending time working around artificial limitations"...

And yet, that's what most people that code applications have to do for
a living, thing outside of the box, And no, it's not an
understatement. Perhaps if you took the time to learn how some of
those documents work you would find out that the tricks used are
actually quite simple. And most of them are even docummented, see the
tutorials on my website.

> You could do better, with little additional (or even less) effort,
> with a better language - as simple as that.
>> and start to build instead of complaining.
> You're being disrespectful.

So are you. In fact, so has the whole programming community that
simply refuses to accept other's points of view and fail to justify
their opinions with facts and state as fact or obvious things are just
are not.

Oh, if you want to know more about respect, perhaps you can look into
http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=139295, especially the
comments on pages 4, 5 and 6 that are directed towards what was said
in this forum.

Nelson

[Don Shepherd]

You seem to think that TI should be under some moral obligation to
make the NSpire a robust programming platform because some kids
learned programming on the TI-83. I learned programming for the first
time at a computer programming trade school back in 1968. In those
days there were no electronic calculators and, even if they had
existed at that time, if you wanted to become a programmer you learned
real languages that were actually used on mainframes; in my case,
assembly language for the IBM 360, COBOL, and RPG. The school at
which I learned programming didn't even have its own computer in those
days; no school could afford the monthly rental on an IBM mainframe.
We punched our programs onto cards and gave them to our teacher whose
"real" job was at an insurance company that did have a mainframe, and
he would compile our programs there.

I'm well aware that times have changed since then, but when I taught
programming courses at the local community college a few years ago the
platform was a PC, not a calculator. I love programming programmable
calculators, especially RPN calculators from HP, but anyone who has
programmed calculators should be honest enough to admit that a
calculator is not the best platform for learning programming. The PC
is much better, and virtually every public school in the US has a PC-
based computer lab which is the ideal environment for learning
programming.

Professors Kemeny and Kurtz invented BASIC at Dartmouth College in
1964 so that non-engineering students could get an early exposure to
programming. The principles they used in designing BASIC were meant
to make it easy for a non-technical person to get an introduction to
programming. The platform was the minicomputer, which schools could
afford.

Just because some calculators do offer programming features does not
mean they are the best platform for learning programming. I wouldn't
seriously consider teaching programming using a calculator, nor would
anyone I know.

Please remember that the purpose of the NSpire is to help kids
understand and experiment with math concepts. I expect TI to support
that purpose, and they do. TI has no obligation to make the NSpire a
robust programming platform. There are much better platforms for
learning programming.

On Mar 6, 6:50 pm, Christopher Mitchell <kermmart...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am Christopher "Kerm Martian" Mitchell, and I founded Cemetech, a
> pillar of the TI programming community, over a decade ago.  In recent
> years, community members have become more and more concerned with TI's
> lackadaisical attitude towards the community, particularly in its
> attempts to block any kind of nontrivial programming capabilities on
> the TI-Nspire, either in the form of BASIC, ASM, or C.  I recently
> wrote a short editorial about the current state of TI and the graphing
> calculator scene, and a half-dozen of my members suggested that the
> members of this group might both find the article interesting and be
> able to offer some feedback.  Feel free to take a look at some of the
> eighty-odd comments that have accrued in the past eighteen hours,
> mostly from other programmers voicing their concerns and telling the
> story of how their TI calculators first got them interested in
> programming, computer science, or engineering.  The link to the
> discussion is here; enjoy the read, and of course please provide any
> feedback.
>
> http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5861
> -------
>
> For the past thirteen years of my life, I have been a dedicated,
> vehement member of the TI calculator coding community. I first started
> writing TI-BASIC on a school TI-82 in sixth grade, and got my very own
> TI-83 for Christmas in seventh grade. I developed my TI-BASIC skills,
> released hundreds of programs, then began to teach myself z80 ASM as I

> started high school. I have maintained a hobbyist website (Cemetech,http://www.cemetech.net) and community centered around programming

[Lionel Debroux]

>>> - how is Prizm such a better choice if in your own words its "BASIC
>>> interpreter is painfully slow"?
>> Perhaps slow is better than none ?
> Please see below your comment about the existing/non-existing
> programming power of the Nspire.
>

>>> - how is it that with all that non existant programming power on
>>> the Nspire rich content has been created with little or no
>>> programming at all?
>> Please quit being silly and behave as a grown-up...
>> We're not saying that there's "non existant programming power on
>> the Nspire", because that's *obviously* not true.
> Please read above your comment about the Basic interpreter on the
> Nspire, where you say "slow is better than none".

Alright, I see what you mean. That was definitely very poor wording
on my side...
Several posts into the Cemetech topic, there's:
"
The only complaint I got about the Prizm is that BASIC drawing
commands are extremely slow (0.3 seconds to draw a pixel).
"
That's what I had in mind when replying you about the slowness of the
interpreter.
So let me re-phrase my thought as
"Perhaps [a] slow [pixel drawing function] is better than none ?"

You have the right to disagree, as always.

> Oh, if you want to know more about respect, perhaps you can look
> into http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=139295, especially
> the comments on pages 4, 5 and 6 that are directed towards what was
> said in this forum.

Well, you already got some respect in the open development community
during the "we made it to xkcd" episode, due to statements such as (but
not limited to) "ti-bank's forum is actually useless".
Now, you get more of it, for another round of misunderstandings,
attempts at misrepresenting the statements of other persons, and
failure at grasping basic facts.

Lionel.

[Andy Kemp]

I have followed this (and the various other threads over the last few years) with interest.  Ultimately the problems here are to do with expectations...

 

Those who programmed on the older TI calcs (which TI supported to a greater or lesser degree) expect that TI should continue to provide the same facilities on all later products like the TI-Nspire.  That a graphical calculator should in some sense be a proto-computer, a device on which you can learn to programme...  The rationale (as I understand it) for this is that a graphical calculator is a widely available device that many students own.

 

The flip side of this is TI's own statements about what they are about.  At the recent T3 conference (as well in other places) their president made it clear that it is their aim to produce 'special purpose maths and science technology'.  It may well be that this is a change in their strategy from the 83/84 days, but never the less this is their current stance...

 

Because of this stance they have prioritised the mathematical capabilities of the TI-Nspire device over and above developing the coding potential.  This have been evident in the significant mathematical (and in this sense I mean maths pedagogical) improvements we have seen with each upgrade to the TI-Nspire.  I am absolutely confident that if TI could have easily added the kind of I/O that people want in a way that makes sense in the very different TI-Nspire structure they would have done...

 

Whilst the type of programming available on the TI-Nspire is very different to that available on other devices, it has proved itself to be extremely flexible for use in constructing mathematical programmes when used in conjunction with the dynamic features of the TI-Nspire.  This enables you to achieve all sorts of interesting and powerful constructions.  Could some of these be done differently (and some case more simply) if we had the ability to plot pixels etc? In some cases probably...  However the more dynamic features of the TI-Nspire (dynamic graphs, sliders, etc) have also meant that little or no programming ability is required for students to achieve some of the same things that were very complex on the 83/84+

 

I am also aware that there is a significant amount of concern amongst some (I'm not one of them) teachers about allowing a more flexible programming environment for the very reason that has been stated by others that most of the time students end up playing games (and sadly the vast majority are not involved in programming these games, which is a much more worthwhile endeavour!).  As TI's primary market is high schools, keeping the teachers who recommend which device to buy for their classes (or as is more common in the UK, actually buy class sets for use in lessons) on side is obviously important.  And for those teachers knowing (at least roughly) what their students are doing on the calculator is important...

 

For those whose sole reason for buying a graphical calculator is as a programming device I concur with the author, at present TI-Nspire CX is probably not the device for you - Although I would also question whether the Casio is either (speaking as someone who had one of the 4 colour Casio Graphical Calcs the author mentioned!)...

 

I don't program for a living (I'm a maths teacher), but my early programming experience wasn't on a graphical calculator it was on computer (A ZX-Spectrum, and BBC Micro!) and whilst I did do some programming on my casio graphical calculator I didn't find the experience nearly as satisfying...  Maybe that says more about me, or the casio, then about the concept; but for me if I was looking to start out programming now I would buy a cheap netbook and pick one of the many mainstream languages that you can choose from where there is a much greater wealth of documentation and lots more official support.

 

However if you are buying a graphical calculator to use in learning mathematics, then I personally think there are many compelling reasons why you may want to choose the TI-Nspire instead of the Prism (or any other Graphing Calc).

Personally I think we will see some of the kind of programming features people want available on the TI-Nspire in time, but from the perspective of the mathematics classroom I am pleased they have prioritised other things above these features...

 

For those of you thinking of moving to the Prism for its programming facilities, I wish you well, and I hope it lives up to your expectations...

 

Cheers

Andy

 

[Joe]

Wow, this is really getting interesting. I never would have guessed
that the subject of programing would ignite so much passion and
because of all the intensity, I am a bit hesitant to offer my
thinking, but oh well, here gos.

Personally I have no interest in games and certainly oppose their use
in class, but crippling the programing capability of the machine is
not the answer because it cripples it for teachers and their programs
as well. I think it is important to keep in mind that while brilliant
people like Nelson can deal with the nspire programing environment,
teachers like me have neither the time nor the desire to jump thru
hoops in order to impliment a math program that for instance requires
interaction with the screen that cannot be implimented in a simple
manner. Yes, I have some math program ideas that I want to impliment
on a calc, but as long as the programing is not as easy to do as it
was on the ti-83/84 series, it just isn't going to happen on the
nspire and I will continue to use other devices. So lets not cut off
our nose to spite our face. The programing people want better
programability, and if TI impliments it, that will benefit us also.
Surely there is a solution to preventing games in the classroom that
doesn't require limited and difficult programing, and surely TI can
figure out what that solution is, and surely we can support it.

I support better and easier programing for the nspire and note that it
will benefit other teachers as well as myself, and until that happens,
for many people such as myself, the nspire is just not a programable
calculator. Is any one at TI listening?

> > intohttp://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=139295, especially

[Andy Kemp]

Hi Joe,

 

The crux of the problem is this bit:

 

Surely there is a solution to preventing games in the classroom that
doesn't require limited and difficult programing, and surely TI can
figure out what that solution is, and surely we can support it.

I agree there must be a solution, but I don't think finding it is trivial!  I am quite sure that TI know there are people out there who want a more flexible programming environment.  I am equally sure that they will have spent time and money exploring what the options are to integrate this in a meaningful way into the Nspire model... 

 

However as they have clearly stated in the past their aim is to produce a specialist maths teaching tool (not a generic graphical calculator), so they have so far prioritsed other features above this...

 

I am sure we all have our own opinions on what TI should prioritise, and I am quite sure we wouldn't all agree...

 

When the enhanced programming requirements make it to the top of the pile and TI come up with a solution, I am sure we will then all try to support it...  Until then for my needs (which won't be the same as everyone) the TI-Nspire is still a much more flexible and powerful teaching tool then any other Graphical Calculator I have used...

 

[Don Shepherd]

Joe, I'm not so sure that programming on the NSpire's is more
difficult than programming on the 83's and 84's. I've written
programs for all those machines, and once you understand how the
NSpire's program editor works, actually entering a program is easy,
compared to the 83/84. On the 83/84 you must enter programming
commands and instructions from the menus; the NSpire lets you just
type them in without fooling with a menu. The NSpire provides many
more structured programming constructs than the 83's. And the NSpire
libraries let you define your own functions and use them in other
programs easily, which is a great feature.

I believe that most of the people lobbying for better "programming" on
the NSpire aren't really talking about improvements to NSpire's BASIC,
they want to hack the NSpire OS so it will run games. Just as there
are other platforms that are better suited for programming, the same
is true for games.

Don

> > Lionel.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Christopher Mitchell]

On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 7:51 PM, Eric Findlay <eagl...@duetsoftware.net> wrote:

Now, don't get me wrong, I love Omnicalc, Symbolic, and other prgms/apps that take advantage of the 83/84's loopholes.  I'm just saying I understand where TI (and Apple) is coming from in this decision, and I don't fault them for it.

I still think the Nspire is a much better tool than the 83/84, and I'm going to stick with it.

  --Eric F.

Eric, a small point of interest, as mentioned by Lionel above.  Apps like Omnicalc and Symbolic were written with official documentation and an SDK from Texas Instruments in hand, rather than as an exploitation of loopholes and reverse engineering.  Many applications for the TI-83+/84+, including my own Doors CS 7, would be well-nigh impossible without the extensive information that TI shared about the OS, hooks, rom calls, memory layout, etc.  Since those calculators, however, TI has radically changed their attitude towards the programming community.

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 7:14 AM, Nelson Sousa <nso...@gmail.com> wrote:

Oh, if you want to know more about respect, perhaps you can look into
http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=139295, especially the
comments on pages 4, 5 and 6 that are directed towards what was said
in this forum.

You'll notice that the one user who was generating ad hominem attacks was reprimanded by several members, and if you read closely, you'll see that some of the users even align more closely with your viewpoints than with the rest of the programming community.

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 9:35 AM, Joe <wjb...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[...]So lets not cut off

our nose to spite our face.  The programing people want better

programability, and if TI impliments it, that will benefit us also.

Surely there is a solution to preventing games in the classroom that
doesn't require limited and difficult programing, and surely TI can
figure out what that solution is, and surely we can support it.

Thanks, Joe, I think that's a very healthy attitude.

 

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 10:26 AM, Don Shepherd <shep...@iglou.com> wrote:

Joe, I'm not so sure that programming on the NSpire's is more
difficult than programming on the 83's and 84's.  I've written
programs for all those machines, and once you understand how the
NSpire's program editor works, actually entering a program is easy,
compared to the 83/84.  On the 83/84 you must enter programming
commands and instructions from the menus; the NSpire lets you just
type them in without fooling with a menu.  The NSpire provides many
more structured programming constructs than the 83's.  And the NSpire
libraries let you define your own functions and use them in other
programs easily, which is a great feature.

Don, the TI-68k calculators (namely, the TI-89, the TI-89ti, the TI-92/+, and the Voyage 200) allow the same arbitrary command entry and on-the-fly tokenization, similar powerful tools to define functions, plus I/O commands.  In fact, I have often heard the TI-Nspire programming language described as "TI-89 BASIC minus I/O commands".

[ACagliano]

Wow. I'm impressed by the passion of this subject.

I will cite from a small paper I am preparing on the topic:

"I am unaware where the stigma of programming being a hinderance comes
from, but it seems to be present in all teachers of the appropriate
fields; that programming one's calculator is, not only a waste of
time, but also a keen way to cheat on exams. I will grant that many
students do not care at all about the merits of calculator programming
and use programs to store cheats, but to embrace just this one group
of students as the reason "spoils the bunch", so to speak. There are
many of us out there who use programming not to cheat, but rather to
hone in on one's own skills and to grasp a higher understanding of the
topics presented. The nature of a program, when constructed as such,
is not to cheat. I have always been taught that the best test of
whether or not you understand the material is to see if you can do it
yourself. But, what better indication is there that you know the
material so well than that you can give a calculator fool-proof
instructions on how to carry out a given calculation, have it explain
why that calculation was made, and account for margins of error."

It is extremely tedious to create educational programs with the degree
of functionality described in the later part of that excerpt. However,
it would be easier to use this stuff if more attention was paid, by
students, to their acessories (ie: USB cables, unit-to-unit cables,
ect.). Then, we could simply provide the program, with instructions on
how to transfer programs.

If that is not convincing enough, allow me to present this. I myself
will admit to having used pre-made programs on tests in the past. Not
for reference on information, but merely for computational assistance…
the ability to perform multiple calculations at once. On average, I
performed the same, if not worse, on the exam, leading me to the
conclusion that regardless of what you bring into the test, not even a
program can help you if you do not know the material.

To return to the main topic, I will not be the first to fly off and
attack TI. However, I do agree that TI seems to be less in favor of
programming now. The release of TI's NSpire operating systems seem
curiously in-sync with the release of Nleash, forcing us to write a
new version of the software in order to "jail-break" the new OS's.
And, the mechanisms to prevent downgrading seem as if they are there
simply to prevent us from returning to an OS that Nleash has been
ported to.

But, while these seem to be odd coincidences, I am willing to concede
the fact that they may indeed be coincidences. That said, I don't want
to hear any TI supporters bashing me for what I have said above.
Instead, prove that it is not true.

My main statement is this: TI needs to remember that it has an
obligation to support education and advancement. This means that it
finds a BALANCE between programming support and standardized test
functionality. This does not mean completely abandon one in favor of
the other.

[Eric Findlay]

I don't know where all these people get the idea that TI is not in favour of programming anymore. The standard programming is much easier to use and more powerful than ever. What TI is now opposed to is people

[Eric Findlay]

...is people who overwrite the code of the operating system. Yes, this is strange in a sense considering the 83/84, but it doesn't mean that TI is against programming, just against a certain type.

>> There are
>> many of us out there who use programming not to cheat, but rather to
>> hone in on one's own skills and to grasp a higher understanding of the
>> topics presented.

If this is the type of thing you want to program, then you should be quite happy with the programming capabilities of the Nspire. You don't need ASM or ARM to write functioms for Math, Physics, Chemistry, etc.

--Eric

[Christopher Mitchell]

Eric,

TI-83+/84+ series Apps and programs are all created without overwriting the OS at all.  The only time overwriting the OS came under consideration was when coders wanted to try to fully replace the TI-OS, as in the signing key controversy of a year ago. It sounds like what you're actually trying to get at is that TI is just against programming of non-educational programs, correct?

Christopher Mitchell

[Eric Findlay]

Ah, thanks.  That's my misunderstanding on the issue.  Does Ndless not overwrite the OS?  I thought I had read that it did.

But yes, I guess that you could say they're against non educational programs.  And in response to one of your comments in the other thread,it's not really a matter of how we or you view the product, but the fact that TI, the manufacturer states that they build teaching tools, not general computational devices, so they take steps to preserve its function.  I think that's sensible and valid.

--Eric

[Nelson Sousa]

I don't think anyone can speak for what ti does or does not want. That's part of the problem, facts are mixed with opinions and lots of assumptions. And, as a friend of mine usualy says, when you assume you make and ass of u and me.

--

Nelson

[Lana Golembeski]

Ok. I honestly do not have the time to read ALL the posts on this. But I do have some things i would like to throw into the pot! First, I have found TI to be EXTREMELY responsive to problems that I have encountered. They respond within a day and either ask for more information or point out the error in my ways. Maybe it is just Minnesota, but our support is exceptional here! I cannot speak about other calculators as I do not know.

Second, the Nspire is all about education. It is about getting students to consider all aspects of a problem and to really comprehend the underlying math. It is NOT easy to use....but to me that is exactly what are students are heading towards in the 21st century. They need to work with complex technology. If I see one more "simplify sqr root 8", I will scream!! That math is very low level and the students do not comprehend the underlying number theory. Students today do not care. they would rather have the decimal approximation. They need to understand the calculator does NOT give the exact answer but only an approximation. The reason we ever simplified radicals was to use the SLIDE RULE! There is NO need for that anymore. and we do not need to do trig identities either! Unless we are in a techniques of integration class, we all have calculators that will give us the decimals we know and love and the symbolic integrals as well. There are only 3 trig identities I require my students to know. We only needed all of the identities to look up values in our tables or to do an integral. With the CAS calculator, why are we wasting our time doing integrals by hand? I would much prefer to be looking at problems and finding solutions. The integral is grunt work. 

Third, what is wrong with learning to program? I think it is something that students need to learn. We have thrown out proofs in geometry, so where are students going to learn how to think? And my students do not know the difference between an OS and a Program (they probably think OS is a misspelling of the OC). Honestly, they do NOT! I update their 84 calculators with the OS and then I give them my programs. They think they cannot have my programs when they have an 83...they confuse the terms. I think if you are going to use technology, you really should know what an OS is. It is everywhere in our lives. You don't have to know the details but you should know the difference between an OS and a simple program. So, I am sure they don't have a clue about their phones, ipads, and such. And to make the right choice when buying a phone or tablet, you need to know what the differences are. Education in the 21st century is changing...and we are not going to stop it! So, let's teach the kids what they NEED to know!

Ok...I am getting off my soap box (young teachers...ask your older teachers about a "soap box") LOL!

Lana

[Marilyn Auvermann]

Thank you Lana for taking the time to present a reasoned response to the formidable “threads” that are running here.  I teach Alg I and Geo in an inner-city school and we were just gifted with TI Inspires and the Navigator System.  I am running to catch up with all the new capability and so joined this group hoping to interact with others with more experience but with empathy for my position.  I was just preparing to resign from the group (I don’t need a political upheaval directed toward TI or any other members of the technical community); but your post provided hope.  I live in Dallas, TI’s home, and so am reassured that it’s not only Dallas folk who receive good service.  Thank you for taking the time to give me hope.

 

Marilyn

[Lana Golembeski]

Marilyn, so good to hear from you! TI has always been good to me and anyone I know. 

I do get a bit tired of hearing my iphone dinging with all the messages! LOL! But there is so much good info here and so many people willing to help when you get stuck. So it is a good group to stick with! My girlfriend lives in Dallas....and I was there as a fast tracker! Time to go back!

Lana

[Joe]

Gee Lana, I just couldn't resist answering your question of : "why
are we wasting our time doing integrals by hand?" The answer is
this. While you might think that an integral, is an integral, is an
integral. Technically that is not true. You see there is the Riemann
integral, and then there is the Stieltges integral, and of course the
Lebesque integral and a few others. So one reason to do integrals by
hand is to gain an understanding of the difference. Perhaps a more
important reason is because you don't have those buttons on your
calculator.

A while back someone said to me that there is something wrong with the
person who won't use the latest technoloy to teach math. My reply was
that the problem with that kind of thinking is that the kids that use
calcs, learn less about math than the ones that don't have that
advantage. Oh well.

> >http://lafacroft.com/archive/nspire.php- Hide quoted text -

[Lana Golembeski]

I disagree. Those students learn the mechanics of doing math. I dont know for sure but I am confident that those integrals can be done with computer software. And if not, then spend time doing those integrals by hand. The talented kids gain nothing by doing a mechanical process. And yes, I have done Lebesque integrals . But it has been almost 40 years so I remember nothing. I just remember I was one of the best mathematicians at the u of m. But I sucked at physics! My engineering friends never do calculus by hand. They do it all w computers. They don't even remember their calculus! But they learned to think and problem solve but not because they could master a skill in integration. I was great at skills but I sucked at problem solving which is why I was a lousy physicist.

The future is all about thinking and problem solving.it is not about mechanics and skills. A computer can do that but it cannot think!!

Next question: what about people teaching Math who have no training in teaching? There is your bone!! Go get it! Lol! I can play in the big league!!

Btw my students know what an integral is as well as how to compute them. I do not teach skills. I teach understanding . Skills follow - do not precede.

Sent from my iPhone
Lana

[Qwerty]

I think one of the primary questions that has come up in this debate
is whether calculators and [more] advanced programming capabilities
inhibit the learning of math. To be honest, I fail to see how this is
true provided that the calculators are used properly. Calculators are,
like everything else in the classroom, tools for learning. As such,
they can both be used as effective teaching aids and as ways to cheat.
But let's face it. The sad reality of the school system, at least as
far as I am aware of it, is that some students will always find a way
to cheat. This is almost an inevitability in schools and I'm certain
it's not unique to our modern era. However, almost any tool can be
used for cheating of some fashion given determined enough students. If
one wanted to (and I have), you can do the numerical approximations by
hand that others have implied are detrimental to mathematical
understanding. Locking down the calculator doesn't stop people from
being able to cheat in the slightest.

On the other hand, many people including myself have found calculators
and their simple BASIC exceedingly useful for simple tasks and even
enabling understanding of other mathematical topics. Programming
interactive programs (such as games!) has helped many a person to
grasp mathematical concepts more firmly than they would have
otherwise. Games themselves, particularly those that include realistic
physics, are often absolutely brimming with math. The programmer of
such a game has to have a solid understanding of the fact that they
are working with a machine that, at its most basic level, is
essentially a physical implementation of a mathematical concept, the
finite state machine. One example of this would be 3D CAD, which is
possible with the TI-83+ series' version of BASIC. To undertake such a
project involves extensive trigonometric manipulations and projection
algorithms to implement true virtual 3D.

Also, one can also debate the necessity of understanding symbolic
manipulations rather than the underlying theory. As much as schools
stress symbolic math, there are remarkably few professions where it's
more practical or even possible to use symbolic math. For example,
many technical or academic jobs (places where advanced math is likely
to be used) involve data collection from physical systems. I can't
tell you the last time I heard of an actual system that returned
something like sqrt(2)/3. The best you're likely to get is
0.471404520791 and even that would require an amazing setup to achieve
that kind of precision. Of course, some fields like theoretical
physics do indeed give back such answers. However, I actually went
down and talked to a professor of mine who does theoretical quantum
physics concerning his use of math. The interesting point was that in
many situations, symbolic solutions don't exist in any accessible
form. The only way he's able to determine usable answers is to
numerically approximate the solutions. This would imply that the point
of math should be to understand the underlying operations so that you
can solve the problem when it appears in a modified form, not
understand the mechanics. Several people above mentioned integration
as an example of why calculators aren't good, simply because most
return decimal approximations. Yet, I'm curious as to how many
widespread applications actually require symbolic integration. The one
known algorithm to do it has never even been fully implemented in
mathematical software. All of the main applications for integrals such
as physics and differential equations are typically happy with
numerical approximations.

I think I'm getting a little long winded here, so I'll wrap it up.

About the Casio Prizm, it's not quite as bad as some people have made
it out to be. The native BASIC is only truly slow with I/O commands.
The math commands are blazing fast and everything else seems to work
at around the same speed as that of the TI-84+ series. In my opinion,
slow I/O commands are infinitely better than largely non-existent I/O
commands. Also, while the Nspire has a faster processor during normal
operation, the Prizm can be overclocked higher than that. As was said
previously, the Nspire is fast enough in normal mode. A Prizm
operating at a higher frequency should thus be more than adequate for
most people.

Overall, while the Nspire is indeed a powerful calculator, I think it
fails to take advantage of teaching opportunities for teaching that it
could provide. TI has no obligation to provide programming
capabilities on its calculators, but they likewise have no obligation
to shut down all development, which may hurt more than it helps. That
student who is playing games in class isn't likely to be listening
otherwise. Similarly, those who cheat on tests only hurt themselves in
that they fail to learn the material properly if they ever need to
apply the concepts again.

[Lionel Debroux]

(Christopher)

> > TI-83+/84+ series Apps and programs are all created without
> > overwriting the OS at all. The only time overwriting the OS came
> > under consideration was when coders wanted to try to fully replace
> > the TI-OS, as in the signing key controversy of a year ago. It
> > sounds like what you're actually trying to get at is that TI is
> > just against programming of non-educational programs, correct?

(Eric)

> Ah, thanks. That's my misunderstanding on the issue. Does Ndless
> not overwrite the OS? I thought I had read that it did.

The answer is "mostly no" - though Ndless does indeed fiddle with the OS :)
* the encrypted and signed Nspire OS, stored in Flash memory, is not
modified by Ndless. Ndless works differently from TI-Z80 and TI-68k OS
patche(r)s, see below.
* Ndless does, however, patch the RAM copy of the OS, which is decrypted
and validated by the boot2.

On the TI-Z80 and the TI-68k series, multiple on-calc programs overwrite
several select bytes of the OS, in order to kill limitations, e.g. AMS
2.xx special-casing the old 89/92+ HW1 calculators to reduce the amount
of user-available archive memory from 640 KB to 384 KB (!), or fix bugs
not fixed by TI.

Let's mention three on-computer patchers which perform more complex
patching than the on-calc programs do:
* PolyPatch ( original source
http://ti.bank.free.fr/index.php?mod=news&ac=commentaires&id=933 is
written in French, http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?topic=6324.0 is
written in English) unlocks and fixes the 84+ OS.
* tiosmod+amspatch (
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/14/146/146852.html ,
https://github.com/debrouxl/tiosmod ) unlocks, optimizes, fixes,
restores an improved version of something removed by TI in 2000, and
additionally shrinks 2.08 and 2.09 for 89, moving some data to a huge
space left unused by TI, so as to make them fit in the same space budget
as AMS 2.05 does. But the vast majority of the unfixed bugs listed in
http://www.ibiblio.org/technicalc/buglist/bugs.pdf are too hard for us
third parties to fix...
* Chameleon enables upgrading the 73 to 83+ functionality level.

Patching on the computer side enables re-signing the patched OS, which
has been demonstrated on a real TI-Z80 but takes minutes, and also
enables making and distributing binary diffs between the pristine and
patched OS.

All of this was made possible by man-years of reverse-engineering work
over more than a decade, and in 2009, several CPU-years for factoring
the RSA public keys.

Lionel.

[Luke Setzer]

My only real "wish" in all this dialogue about programming involves a
"wish" that the TI-Nspire would accommodate nifty programs like the
EE*Pro and ME*Pro applications that the TI-89 runs. Those are quite
powerful and helpful. I have seen nothing like them for the TI-
Nspire.

My other "wish" for true 3D graphics -- another TI-89 feature -- seems
to have come true with the CX.

Other than that gripe about some unsupported applications, I am quite
happy with the progress and direction of the TI-Nspire. I still
"wish" we could have better lead information about coming improvements
so we do not squander money on instantly obsolete hardware. But that
comes with the territory of technology.

[Joe]

Lana, we are way off topic and will probably be called out on that,
but I just cannot let you get away with saying things like students
don't need to practice math. First of all the test of understanding
is being able to do it. Secondly math like sports requires practice
to be any good at it. Thirdly you are making a big mistake by
treating the situation as a choice of one or the other. It's both the
understanding and the skill that is important. Fourthly, that you
remember yourself as one of the best mathematicians at the u of m is
rather strange. Why is it that I never heard of you? What did you
publish? Fifthly, engineering friends that don't even remember their
calculus may be good friends but they are indeed very poor engineers.
Lastly I have to go now, and I won't reply anymore on this because it
is drifting off into stupid space. -End of subject.-

> >>>http://lafacroft.com/archive/nspire.php-Hide quoted text -

[Lana Golembeski]

I never said that the didn't to practice math! We need to look at what they are practicing. We cannot continue to teach 1950's math and compete in the 21st century! Drs need to be up to date w current technology. We are no different! And most students are not going to major in math.

Sent from my iPhone
Lana

[Lana Golembeski]

I never ever said I was one of the best mathematicians at the u of m! I did my grad work in physics. I m not sure y you are so angry w me. But you need to read what I write and stop putting words in my mouth. My friends are top engineers. One is published and has designed chips that are use in apple products. My students all practice their math. But honestly we do not need to know how to simplify radicals! There is almost no value in that except number theory- which is good but not necessarily for the ave student. If it is I can assure that they have no number sense coming to me in calculus.so we are failing at that!

Sent from my iPhone
Lana

[mjs]

Ok, lets treat this like a board of information and like a bad blog.

Most recent  statement, "I never ever said I was one of the best mathematicians at the u of m! I did my grad work in physics."

First statement, "I just remember I was one of the best mathematicians at the u of m. But I sucked at physics!"

Keep it on on the table and honest. Makes everyone more credible.

---

From: Lana Golembeski <gole...@gmail.com>
To: "tins...@googlegroups.com" <tins...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, March 8, 2011 10:13:18 AM

Subject: Re: [tinspire] Re: Why TI Calc Coders Should Abandon the Nspire CX

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>>
>>>> - Show quoted text -
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[Lana Golembeski]

I didn't mean i was that kind of mathematician. I was excellent at the calculus skills. This illustrates my point that knowing skills in math does mean you will be a good problem solver.the guys all came to me for help in calculus. I m sorry I implied that I was a true mathematician because that is not true. I am excellent with the skills and can do many concrete proofs but beyond that I m no mathematician at all. I would not be publishing papers in mathematics as I was not doing grad work in math. I should have published my thesis in nuclear physics but I needed to get a job to take care of myself. So it never happened. I had all the course work and I had almost all A's (because of my math skills). I m sorry I implied I was a true mathematician.

But my daughter was! And she used her Ti 89 constantly. She did very little by hand. She had the highest preliminary scores that u of co boulder had seen! She would have been published in math but she was killed before she finished her PhD in math. And she was definitely deficient in skills but outstanding in understanding. And THAT is a true mathematician in my mind. She lived doing those abstract proofs!

Sent from my iPhone

Lana

To unsubscribe send email to tinspire+u...@googlegroups.com

[Thomas Dickerson]

On Mar 7, 9:35 am, Joe <wjb...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Personally I have no interest in games and certainly oppose their use
> in class, but crippling the programing capability of the machine is
> not the answer because it cripples it for teachers and their programs
> as well. I think it is important to keep in mind that while brilliant
> people like Nelson can deal with the nspire programing environment,
> teachers like me have neither the time nor the desire to jump thru
> hoops in order to impliment a math program that for instance requires
> interaction with the screen that cannot be implimented in a simple
> manner. Yes, I have some math program ideas that I want to impliment
> on a calc, but as long as the programing is not as easy to do as it
> was on the ti-83/84 series, it just isn't going to happen on the

> nspire and I will continue to use other devices. So lets not cut off

> our nose to spite our face. The programing people want better
> programability, and if TI impliments it, that will benefit us also.
> Surely there is a solution to preventing games in the classroom that
> doesn't require limited and difficult programing, and surely TI can
> figure out what that solution is, and surely we can support it.
>

> I support better and easier programing for the nspire and note that it
> will benefit other teachers as well as myself, and until that happens,
> for many people such as myself, the nspire is just not a programable
> calculator. Is any one at TI listening?

I am glad to see someone taking the rational approach to this. But I
think the knee-jerk reaction that most teachers have to the idea of
gaming in class is both obviously responsible for TI's decision to
cripple the Nspire, and, like so much else in our culture, an attempt
to treat the symptoms of a problem rather than the problem itself. The
problem is most certainly NOT students playing games (or disengaging
in any other way available to them) in class. The problem is when
educators fail to interpret the feedback their students are providing
them by doing so. While there are some students who actively disengage
themselves from class for various reasons (and for whom disciplinary
or counseling measures are problem needed to ensure they stay on
task), they are, by and large, in the minority to the students who
have been passively disengaged by their teacher's active failure to
engage them. Poor grades serve to drive normal students who are "just
slacking" to re-engage with class rather than with whatever else they
are doing, but students who are both clearly mastering the material
AND playing games in class should be throwing up red flags all over
the place that you as a teacher either need to step up your game to
engage them - or leave them alone to do their own thing. As a high
school student I taught myself a supposedly year-long junior-year math
class (Integrated 3 for those of you familiar with that program) in
just under 6 weeks between freshman and sophomore year and spent most
of pre-calc and AP Calc AB programming my 84+SE or playing games on
it. I may be in the deep violet on the natural math-abilities
spectrum, but the experience leaves me convinced that a more rigorous
pace and better management of classroom time would serve to better
engage even those students in near-infrared. By protesting loud and
long about games you teachers have made sure that TI heard your pleas
and responded to them - and in doing so you have lost both valuable
learning opportunities for your students, and valuable feedback for
yourselves with regards to the quality of your own pedagogy.


On Mar 7, 12:04 pm, Christopher Mitchell <christop...@cemetech.net>
wrote:

>
> Don, the TI-68k calculators (namely, the TI-89, the TI-89ti, the TI-92/+,
> and the Voyage 200) allow the same arbitrary command entry and on-the-fly
> tokenization, similar powerful tools to define functions, plus I/O
> commands. In fact, I have often heard the TI-Nspire programming language
> described as "TI-89 BASIC minus I/O commands".

It's worth noting that even the 86 (and to the best of my knowledge,
the 85) supports arbitrary command entry and only tokenizes the
program on first run - not quite on the fly like the later 68K models
or the Nspire, but that was the tradeoff to be made for acceptable
performance on the relatively slow processor present in the 86.

On Mar 7, 7:04 pm, Eric Findlay <eagle-...@duetsoftware.net> wrote:
> Ah, thanks. That's my misunderstanding on the issue. Does Ndless not overwrite the OS? I thought I had read that it did.

The official description of Ndless suggests that it is a resident
program rather than a patch to the OS.

On Mar 7, 7:42 pm, Lana Golembeski <golem...@gmail.com> wrote:

> are heading towards in the 21st century. They need to work with complex
> technology. If I see one more "simplify sqr root 8", I will scream!! That
> math is very low level and the students do not comprehend the underlying
> number theory.

It's a crying shame that secondary math education doesn't focus more
heavily on number and set theory underlying mathematics. It also
explains why even the majority of undergraduate math majors who I know
still have very little grasp of what, for example, a function actually
is.

> Students today do not care. they would rather have the
> decimal approximation. They need to understand the calculator does NOT give
> the exact answer but only an approximation. The reason we ever simplified
> radicals was to use the SLIDE RULE! There is NO need for that anymore.

It's also a crying shame that most secondary math educators are so
focused on decimal approximations to the exclusion of all else. The
reason I STILL simplify square roots and am loathe to give a decimal
approximation to anything is because they don't carry any information.
That the legs of a 45-45-90 right triangle with a hypotenuse of unit
length are of length 0.707... conveys nothing about the meaning of the
answer -- sqrt(1/2) does.

[Thomas Dickerson]

Hey everyone,
I apologize for the double post, which I know isn't kosher in most
mailing lists, but I realize I forgot to address several points in my
previous response.

On Mar 7, 7:14 am, Nelson Sousa <nso...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Reverse-engineering is illegal per the license agreement in most
> countries. Namely, it's illegal in the US, France and Portugal, unless
> you do a clean-room reverse engineering, which needs to be proven and
> has never been.

This paragraph is an irresponsible piece of FUD. To quote
http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/faq.cgi#QID195 (the key
portions are highlighted with asterisks)
> **The law regarding reverse engineering in the computer software and
> hardware context is less clear, but has been described by many courts as
> an important part of software development.** The reverse engineering of
> software faces considerable legal challenges due to the enforcement of
> anti reverse engineering licensing provisions and the prohibition on the
< circumvention of technologies embedded within protection measures.
By
> enforcing these legal mechanisms, courts are not required to examine the
> reverse engineering restrictions under federal intellectual property law.
> **In circumstances involving anti reverse engineering licensing provisions,
> courts must first determine whether the enforcement of these provisions
> within contracts are preempted by federal intellectual property law
> considerations.** Under DMCA claims involving the circumvention of
> technological protection systems, courts analyze whether or not the
> reverse engineering in question qualifies under any of the exemptions
> contained within the law. """

I'm sure you remember the signing-keys debacle, and the result that
after the EFF intervened (http://www.eff.org/press/archives/
2009/10/13) TI never chose to pursue legal action. That speaks volumes
about the legality of the issue of reverse engineering in this
context. While it would be irresponsible of me to suggest that reverse
engineering is legal in every situation, your post is a willful
misrepresentation of the truth.

On Mar 8, 2:11 am, Lionel Debroux <debroux.lio...@gmail.com> wrote:
> All of this was made possible by man-years of reverse-engineering work
> over more than a decade, and in 2009, several CPU-years for factoring
> the RSA public keys.

For the sake of completeness, it's worth noting that depending on the
calculator model, some of the keys involved were for use with RSA and
some were for use with the Rabin signature algorithm, but in either
case the factorization of immense semiprimes was required.

[Joe]

Go back and read you post. You said: "I just remember I was one of
the best mathematicians at the u of m." Now you say "I never ever
said I was one of the best mathematicians at the u of m! " Those are
copyed and pasted statements, not something typed in.

> >>>>>http://lafacroft.com/archive/nspire.php-Hidequoted text -

[Nelson Sousa]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 23:46, Thomas Dickerson <elfpr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 7, 7:14 am, Nelson Sousa <nso...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Reverse-engineering is illegal per the license agreement in most
>> countries. Namely, it's illegal in the US, France and Portugal, unless
>> you do a clean-room reverse engineering, which needs to be proven and
>> has never been.
>
> This paragraph is an irresponsible piece of FUD. To quote
> http://www.chillingeffects.org/reverse/faq.cgi#QID195 (the key
> portions are highlighted with asterisks)

About legality or not of reverse engineering: Read the EULA which you
must agree upon in order to use the TI-Nspire software. It explicit
prohibits reverse engineering the software and, therefore, doing it is
a breach of contract. It's illegal because you agreed with a contract
that says so.

[Lana Golembeski]

Seems to me you have too much time on your hands if you can go back and read those posts! Did you read my response to that when I was corrected today ? I guess you don't know what grad school is. I was studying physics. I would not be publishing math articles as a physicist. I also commented that I did not finish my thesis because I needed to support myself. You have taken the statement entirely out of context! And you totally missed the point I was trying to make. I could do triple integrals w my eyes closed. I was proficient w fourier analysis. My math skills were some of the best in my PHYSICS program. I was not implying anything about the math program. I did not enjoy doing proofs so I pursued physics instead . My SKILLS were excellent. But i could not have solved a "problem" if my life depended on it! My point is that having skills alone is worthless. And today I am archaic!! A machine can do the math I was so good at! I need to be able to set up problems. That requires a deep understanding of the concepts. Skills help but they are not the end all. We will see anew breed of students and learners. They will never simplify a radical! Why would they??

You need to give me real solid reasonings for continuing to teach a useless skill. Convince me that it will deepen our students' understanding of math. How many years have you been teaching? Where do you teach? Kids are so turned off by 1950's math - and that is sad. Just look at the research!

And Joe I do a lot of things in a day. I cannot possibly remember every little detail. I look at the big pic. But no one studying physics would publish a math paper. Just cuz I was good at math doesn't mean I would publish anything.
And btw I am published- just not math. I have had many of my grief poems about the death of my only child published. And when I have the time I wll have a complete collection of my writings published in a book. In addition I am just starting to work on a play about the loss of my only child - in memory of her. The world truly lost a great mathematician when she was killed.

Sent from my iPhone
Lana

[Qwerty]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but the only difference I'm aware of is
in representation, not in information. 0.707... in decimal is
precisely equivalent to sqrt(2)/2 which is precisely equivalent to 1
in base sqrt(2)/2, all of which are the same as 1/sqrt(2).
Furthermore, if you have given any educated person say sqrt(2)/2, I'm
fairly certain that they would not immediately understand that the
number is actually the answer to the question of "What is the length
of the Hypotenuse of a 45-90-45 unit triangle?" anymore than they
would if you gave them 0.707... to go with. Indeed, there are an
infinite number of possible questions which have precisely that
answer. So, can you explain what you mean by your statement that
symbolic representations are more informative than irrational numbers?

[Thomas Dickerson]

On Mar 8, 7:50 pm, Nelson Sousa <nso...@gmail.com> wrote:
> About legality or not of reverse engineering: Read the EULA which you
> must agree upon in order to use the TI-Nspire software. It explicit
> prohibits reverse engineering the software and, therefore, doing it is
> a breach of contract. It's illegal because you agreed with a contract
> that says so.

I'm not sure how to react to this statement. I don't think you
actually read any of what I said, or either of the articles that I
linked to, so please allow me to reiterate the key portion:

> In circumstances involving anti reverse engineering licensing provisions,
> courts must first determine whether the enforcement of these provisions
> within contracts are preempted by federal intellectual property law
> considerations.

In other words, it doesn't matter what the license says about reverse
engineering if a court rules that that portion of the contract is
unenforceable. The fact that when confronted by EFF lawyers, TI did
not pursue their threats of legal actions for publishing knowledge
obtained from our community's reverse engineering efforts makes it
clear that both they and we believe our actions to be legal in the
face of existing case law and Fair-use portions of the DMCA.

[Nelson Sousa]

It's not hard to find that page, it's the first result after googling
"is reverse engineering legal". But it's also not hard to find the
wikipedia article, that comes immediately after,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#Legality and then the
quoted case, Bowers v. Baystate Technologies, that "It established
that shrink-wrap EULA (...) provisions can override the reverse
engineering allowance (...)"

I'm no lawyer and have absolutely no intention in engaging in a legal
debate, especially over copyright law on countries other than my own
and perhaps not even in that case. But I'm pretty sure that if big
corporations had non enforceable provisions in contracts a lot of
lawyers would have been fired.

Nelson

[Nelson Sousa]

As to the reasons why TI did or did not pursue legal action against
the publishers of protected information: I don't why they did it, nor
do I care, nor does it seem relevant to me. But I am a bit shocked
that people can claim in open forums the legality of actions that are,
at least, dubious, without the least bit of legal counseling.

Nelson

[Christopher Mitchell]

Nelson, Thomas,

Regardless of the shades of legality of reverse-engineering the OS, or trying to understand the OS, or even the much less gray area of modifying the OS, the original point is that TI is not only not helping developers work with their platforms and give students the opportunity to explore programming on their technology products, but are actively making it as hard as possible, either with regards to technical knowledge.  Nelson, you're doing a very good point of proving that TI has no interest in anything other than teachers using the Nspire as solely a math education tool, and I and many students, ex-students, programmers, and professional young and old don't feel that this is right or responsible.  If you examine Texas Instruments' website, you'll see a big section on Corporate Citizenship; I and many others feel that only thinking about how their products can help teachers and not how they can help students at the same time, and not just for math, Texas Instruments is being a very poor corporate citizen.

Christopher Mitchell

[Thomas Dickerson]

I don't wish to continue to sidetrack this conversation, and I am most
interested in hearing the response that the educators on this mailing
list have with regards to my post about gaming in the classroom;
however, it does seem that there are several unanswered questions
regarding my other remarks which I would like to clarify before I
continue waiting for a response to my original post.

On Mar 8, 8:26 pm, Qwerty <veningri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Indeed, there are an
> infinite number of possible questions which have precisely that
> answer. So, can you explain what you mean by your statement that
> symbolic representations are more informative than irrational numbers?

When you give a number without context you lose information about its
purpose and where it came from. The more complex the mathematics you
are doing, the more useful the additional context becomes.

On Mar 8, 8:51 pm, Nelson Sousa <nso...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As to the reasons why TI did or did not pursue legal action against
> the publishers of protected information: I don't why they did it, nor
> do I care, nor does it seem relevant to me. But I am a bit shocked
> that people can claim in open forums the legality of actions that are,
> at least, dubious, without the least bit of legal counseling.

I should hope that that particular page is one of the first Google
results, given the role that ChillingEffects plays in the online
community.

I should point out that it was under legal counseling from the EFF
that our community members stood their ground against TI's threats,
and TI backed down. I also agree with you that the issue is not as
interesting to discuss as their actions surrounding the Nspire, but I
did feel that it was important to point out that your original
statement on the legality of reverse engineering was irresponsible.

[Don Shepherd]

<<TI has no interest in anything other
than teachers using the Nspire as solely a math education tool>>

That's what it was designed for, that's what this forum is about,
that's exactly what math teachers want TI to do, it has proven to be a
very effective tool for learning math, and if you really want it to do
something else (as you apparerntly do), this is probably not the
appropriate forum to discuss that. The teachers who use the NSpire in
the classroom and are members of this group are, by and large, not
interested in making the NSpire a programming platform for those with
other goals.

On Mar 8, 8:58 pm, Christopher Mitchell <christop...@cemetech.net>
wrote:

> > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#Legalityand then the

> > > quoted case, Bowers v. Baystate Technologies, that "It established
> > > that shrink-wrap EULA (...) provisions can override the reverse
> > > engineering allowance (...)"
>
> > > I'm no lawyer and have absolutely no intention in engaging in a legal
> > > debate, especially over copyright law on countries other than my own
> > > and perhaps not even in that case. But I'm pretty sure that if big
> > > corporations had non enforceable provisions in contracts a lot of
> > > lawyers would have been fired.
>
> > > Nelson
>

> > > On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 01:32, Thomas Dickerson <elfprinc...@gmail.com>

[Thomas Dickerson]

On Mar 8, 10:44 pm, Don Shepherd <sheph...@iglou.com> wrote:
> appropriate forum to discuss that.  The teachers who use the NSpire in
> the classroom and are members of this group are, by and large, not
> interested in making the NSpire a programming platform for those with
> other goals.

Some of the teachers on this mailing list appear to have already
openly disagreed with that evaluation of the situation. I am also
still interested in receiving a response to earlier post on the role
of games and programming in a classroom environment. I have reproduced
it here for those of you who don't have the time to scroll back
through this longish thread.

[Don Shepherd]

Teachers don't really need feedback from non-teachers about what's
wrong in the classroom: they know what's wrong by virtue of being
there every day. One thing that they know is NOT wrong is TI's
refusal to make the NSpire a platform for Doom or Quake or any other
distraction that kids enjoy. These things may be fun, but they aren't
about learning math which, of course, is the main purpose of what goes
on in the classroom. The last thing that a math teacher who uses the
NSpire in the classroom needs is kids playing Quake or Doom on it.

TI has NOT crippled the programming language on the NSpire. It was
crippled in 2007 with a lack of any input command, but that has been
fixed. It is no more difficult to write a BASIC program on the NSpire
than it is on the TI-83+ or TI-84, and the NSpire programming
environment is a big improvement over the 83/84.

If I had a group of students who expressed an interest in programming,
I would develop a curriculum and class, but I would probably teach
programming using PCs rather than calculators, because calculators are
not the best platform for teaching and learning programming.

> > yourselves with regards to the quality of your own pedagogy.- Hide quoted text -

[Christopher Mitchell]

It would seem that there's significant potential for any group to be biased when only judging a situation through their own eyes.  I was once a student with a TI calculator, and I programmed it in many classes.  I was at the high school with the highest mean SAT score in the country, and I got excellent grades, but as elfprince13 points out, some of my classes didn't challenge me enough to stop my exploration of what was possible to make with TI-BASIC.  Was it disrespectful to the teachers? Yes, but as elfprince13 points out, the fault was not entirely on me.  And I wasn't whiling away class hours playing games because I didn't care to understand the material; I had mastered the material and was embarking on an educational adventure of my own.  I'm now pursuing my third and fourth degrees in engineering and computer science fields, and doing my own teaching at the undergraduate level.  The problem that I see is that you make no distinction between the slacker student who is playing games on their calculator because they have no interest in the material, and the mentally keen and curious student who is not being challenged by the teacher and is learning on their own.  It is foolhardy to prevent the curious student from expanding their horizons in order to prevent the slacker from getting distracted, especially since the slacker is just going to play games or text or browse the internet on his or her phone, or doodle, or daydream, or cut class.

You claim that if a group of students expressed interest in programming, you would help them pursue that, which is admirable, but you're missing the point that students might not know they have an interest in programming at all until they start experimenting with their non-Nspire calculator's programming capabilities and discover that it's fun and gratifying to type out code, run it, and watch their handiwork do something cool or useful.

Christopher Mitchell

--

[Eric Findlay]

Well put, Don. (though I thought programming was just fine for math even without input).

--Eric

[Don Shepherd]

Christopher, the NSpire, as it is right now, offers plenty of
opportunities for the curious student to explore math and/or
programming, and teachers should encourage experimentation; the NSpire
does that better than any other platform I have seen.

But there is a time and a place for everything. If I am presenting an
important concept for the students to know, and a bright student is
working on his own BASIC program that is not related to what I am
teaching, that is inappropriate and I will ask the student to re-
focus. We've got to cover the curriculum, that's the bottom line, and
we can't have some students paying attention and doing the work and
others ignoring the lesson. That won't work. Now, outside of class,
on their own time, yeah, experiment to your heart's content, or if I
allow class time for experimentation, that's OK too.

A good teacher (which I think we all try to be) knows that different
kids have different styles and needs, and the teacher tries to
accomondate all of those and let everyone succeed. It's not an easy
job. But we need the students to stay focused on the lesson, and
that's hard if everyone is playing Quake.

I still maintain that the NSpire is a very good tool for the specific
purpose of learning math (and science), and TI is under no obligation
to make it a general-purpose development platform by allowing hacking
into the OS.

On Mar 10, 12:11 pm, Christopher Mitchell <christop...@cemetech.net>
wrote:

> >http://lafacroft.com/archive/nspire.php- Hide quoted text -

[Joe]

Wrong Don. That is what you want TI to do, and no doubt you will get
some support for that position but it is a mistake to think you are
speaking for all teachers. That simply is not true and I know that to
be a fact.

As I said earlier, I for one, am in favor of improved programing for
the nspire. It is an advantage for all teachers, even yourself and
there needs to be more discussion on this. Far to often interesting
conversations like this have been shut down on this site ignoring the
rights of everybody in order to accommodate the desires of some. Is
that what you are advocating. I've seen debates like this go on for
a while on other sites and then shut down as a concensus was achieved
and people lost interest in discussing it further. Why not here?

Don, your post can be intrepreted to mean, "I've got mine and the hell
with you so go away." Surely that's not what you are saying is it?
There's no need to circle the wagons that way. What are the
suggestions on how to improve nspire programing AND at the same time
prohibit games "in class"? Are you against that? If so, I don't
understand why.

Surely something can be done to accommodate everyone. It's just a
matter of what is the best way of doing it without the drastic
approach of crippled programing. I want the device that I use and
recommend to have superior capabilities and I don't understand what is
modivating the people who want other wise. Would someone please
explain what I am missing here?

> > > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#Legalityandthen the

> > >http://lafacroft.com/archive/nspire.php-Hide quoted text -
>
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

[Ray Fox]

The student tendency to get off track is one reason I love my Navigator.

I can see all students' handheld, and project selected one to screen.

When one student has a question, I make them presenter and use as a teaching opportunity.

 

I created and used numerous programs for the TI-83/84+.

Have done limited with Nspire. It has so much functionality, my time is better served (at this point)

mastering the preprogramed uses.

[Eric Findlay]

I think the reason this discussion is not going anywhere is because we cannot agree on the two major points of discussion, namely:

1) what is the purpose of the Nspire (what kind of tool is it)?

And

2) is the programming capability on the Nspire sufficient or "crippled"?

I, for one, think that the programming capabilities as much more powerful and much easier to use than the 83/84, but I know there are others who feel differently.

Because we cannot agree on these two cornerstones of each side of the argument, it will just continue as a back and forth without any progress.

--Eric

[Don Shepherd]

Joe, as a matter of fact I do speak for all teachers......OK, not
really, just kidding.

I don't mean to imply that the BASIC programming implementation on the
current NSpire is perfect. I'd like to see more capabilities in the
way of using color and drawing shapes and things on the screen. It
may be possible to do that now (at least the non-color part), I just
haven't figured out how to do it. The original NSpire in 2007 allowed
only functions, no programs, and the code had to be entered in a
regular calculator page and you had to be careful not to press enter
since that terminated the program entry before you probably wanted
to. But they fixed those things. I also found a problem with the
simple IF statement and notified my TI rep, and they fixed the
documentation related to that too, so they do listen and act when
problems are found. If you think the BASIC needs to be enhanced in
some way, just let your rep know and they will act.

And if somebody wants to write something that is the best thing since
sliced bread and ask TI to include it in the NSpire OS, have at it;
anything can be made better. But this thread (and several other
threads in the past) isn't really about changes to the NSpire BASIC
programming system, it is about opening up the NSpire OS to allow
third-party (that is, non-TI developed) functions and applications
within the NSpire environment, and if that happens then all of our
students will soon be playing Quake instead of doing what we want them
to do. I cannot support that, and I speak only for myself but I think
that would quickly become a problem for most teachers.

TI has chosen to keep its NSpire OS closed to developers. That is
their right. But the BASIC programming language they did provide is
excellent and quite usable. I realize most teachers aren't
programmers and don't want to become programmers. And that's fine
too, the NSpire has abundant functionality outside of BASIC.

Don

> > > >http://lafacroft.com/archive/nspire.php-Hidequoted text -

[Joe]

I think you are correct Eric,
Perhaps it would helpful if each of us answered those questions.
Heres my impression:
1. The purpose of the nspire, is to make money for TI and more
specifically the maximum amount of money. They (TI) may present it
differently, and we may each benefit from it differently, but that
doesn't change the fact that it is just a product produced to make
money for a corporation.
2. When a products capability is intentionally limited by the maker,
I call that crippling a product.

BTW, if I could change one word of what Don said, then he and I are in
aggrement. I still maintain that the NSpire is a very good tool for
the specific purpose of "doing" math (and science). And I agree that

TI is under no obligation to make it a general-purpose development

platform by allowing hacking into the OS, and I don't think that is
what the developers that posted here want. I think they are simply
asking for the ability to create third party programs that are able to
fully utilize the screen, and a few new commands like getkey, or an
SDK can provide that, and that has nothing to do with hacking an OS.

> >>>>http://lafacroft.com/archive/nspire.php-Hidequoted text -

>
> >>> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> >> - Show quoted text -
>
> > --
> > To post to this group, send email to tins...@googlegroups.com
> > To unsubscribe send email to tinspire+u...@googlegroups.com
> > For more options, visit this group at
> >http://groups.google.com.au/group/tinspire?hl=en-GB?hl=en-GB
> > The tns documents shared by group members are archived at

> >http://lafacroft.com/archive/nspire.php- Hide quoted text -

[Joe]

Hi Don,
I also would like to see "more capabilities in the way of using color
and drawing shapes and things on the screen." In fact that is just
what I need for some math programs I want to impliment and perhaps I
am wrong about this, but I think that is also what the developers want
and I didn't hear any of them ask for the ability to change the OS.

I have trouble believing that just asking my rep for an improvement
will get results. You may remember me complaining about the lack of
3d graping capability 4 years ago. Now it's here but it lacks the
shift (Nelson calls it pan) capabililty to fully utililze it. Lets
see if and how long it takes TI to fix that blunder.

Btw, I am sure that if you caught any of your students playing Quake
instead of doing what you want them
to do there would be hell to pay and it wouldn't happen a second
time. As for myself, I have no interest in playing games either, so
what is there to fear about some kids having a game on their personal
calc, and using it on their own time. You know some schools still use
83's and 84's, for which there are many games, and the sky isn't
falling and it is not the end of time. In fact they get by quite
nicely.

Best regards,

> > > > >http://lafacroft.com/archive/nspire.php-Hidequotedtext -

[Don Shepherd]

Thanks, Joe. I don't know really what the developers want, but I
don't think it has anything to do with the NSpire's BASIC programming
system, and that's where my main interest lies.

I guess it might have to do with the fact that "apps" on the TI-83 and
84 are not supported on the NSpire. I know of at least one app
(ZoomAlgebra and ZoomMath) that I purchased and installed on my 84+SE
that I thought was quite good, but I think the basic NSpire CAS (at
least) pretty much does what the Zoom products did. Now, I think it
would be good if TI would consider a math-oriented app from a
developer for incorporating into the NSpire if they thought it would
enhance the NSpire's basic functionality in a good way (ie, not Doom),
but I guess that is between a developer and TI.

I'm reasonably happy with the NSpire BASIC since they allowed inputs
during program execution. I could never implement my 50 game on the
NSpire because there was no way to get input from a user prior to a
year ago, and yes I did think that did "cripple" the language, but
they fixed it.

Don

> ...
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -

[Christopher Mitchell]

Don,

I think the developers are more concerned with TI's general attitude than specific features.  I think if TI added the I/O functions like arbitrary text output, drawing, and a decent asynchronous getKey command, many developers would be very happy, and the Nspires would be at least on par with the TI-83+/84+ TI-BASIC, and potentially almost as powerful as the TI-89 TI-BASIC.  If I'm understanding Joe correctly, he's saying that policing students' use of their calculators in class is a discipline issue, not the responsibility of the hardware manufacturer or their software team.  I also enjoyed Joe's statement that the sky is not falling because students play games on their TI-83+/84+ calculators, and I think he's spot-on.  As I made a point earlier, a student sufficiently intent on being distracted is going to find a way to zone out, whether its with educational technology, or not.  Conversely, just because some students' calculators have games loaded doesn't mean they're going to spend class furiously playing instead of paying attention to you.  I think that crippling their calculators to satisfy a minority of the interested parties who desire such a crippling (ie, some teachers, likely very few students, and no developers) makes very little sense from an educational, a logical, or even a profit-based perspective.  I'm currently advocating Casio's calculators instead, because Casio seems to be operating from a much more logical standpoint, and I can only hope TI will change their mind.

Christopher Mitchell

[Joe]

Let me make sure that I understand you correctly. All you are asking
for is just:
1. I/O functions like arbitrary text output
2. drawing
3. and a decent asynchronous getKey command
and you are NOT asking for access to the OS? Or the ability to modify
it? You just want what would be on par with the TI-83/84 programing?
(Which should make a lot of people happy including me.)
That would be of benefit to teachers also if some sort of "push for
class" button could be used to prevent third party apps from being run
(in class) which the students (not taking any time or effort from the
teachers) can reset it electronically on the way out the door. That
sounds to me to be progress in the right direction for everyone. I
think we initially miss understood what you guys wanted. I know that I
did, and you are actually wanting the same things that I for one,
want. Namely ti-83/84 programing capability. Thank you for clearing
this up. I support your effort to obtain programing on par with the
TI-83/84 programing. Perhaps by crippleing the programing TI had good
intentions but it has back fired and had very undesirable and
unanticipated consequences for everyone.

On Mar 10, 6:42 pm, Christopher Mitchell <christop...@cemetech.net>
wrote:

[Lionel Debroux]

> Let me make sure that I understand you correctly. All you are asking
> for is just:
> 1. I/O functions like arbitrary text output
> 2. drawing
> 3. and a decent asynchronous getKey command
> and you are NOT asking for access to the OS? Or the ability to modify
> it? You just want what would be on par with the TI-83/84 programing?
> (Which should make a lot of people happy including me.)

Yes, we'd definitely take any day the Nspire's *BASIC* becoming on par
with the TI-83+/84+ *BASIC* and TI-68k *BASIC*. In fact, it's the _bare
minimum_ TI can do.
If it had those BASIC commands that many programmable graphic
calculators have had for 15+ years, we wouldn't be criticizing the
Nspire with such intensity... even if lack of such basic commands is
only one item in the list of annoyances with the Nspire.
Let's mention four annoyances, but there are others: screen quality,
touchpad quality, battery consumption (mitigated on newer models with a
rechargeable battery) and backwards-incompatible documents.

However, anything beyond that minimum BASIC functionality level, should
TI be willing to give such access, _is_ definitely useful. And we'd also
take it any day - we're taking all the manufacturer has to offer us, and
creating more of our own, for the right to tinker and use the
hardware/software at its potential ;-)

The TI-68k series offers hundreds of powerful functions dealing with the
EStack, i.e. lower-level math functionality that can be leveraged to
implement faster programs with better algorithms. So should the Nspire !
In the current state of things:
* Mrakoplaz has ported the rather complicated DOOM to the Nspire with
quite some effort, and I have easily and quickly ported six simple C/ASM
graphical demos (none of them can be considered a real game), because
games don't require any significant OS integration: screen, keyboard,
files, and from the POV of the programmer of a Ndless-based program,
you're ready for the party;
* no third-party can port any of the several C/ASM math programs to the
Nspire, due to - as I already mentioned - lack of documentation on the
data structures, the functions dealing with them, and the extreme
difficulty of sifting through that large OS in order to make third-party
documentation of math functionality.
* from the POV of a BASIC programmer, the Nspire is more open to math
than to games; from the POV of a C/ASM programmer, the Nspire platform
is _much_ more open to games than to math (and only TI can fix that) !

> That would be of benefit to teachers also if some sort of "push for
> class" button could be used to prevent third party apps from being run
> (in class) which the students (not taking any time or effort from the
> teachers) can reset it electronically on the way out the door.

Not sure how that could be implemented in a foolproof manner ?

> That sounds to me to be progress in the right direction for everyone.
> I think we initially miss understood what you guys wanted. I know that
> I did, and you are actually wanting the same things that I for one,
> want. Namely ti-83/84 programing capability. Thank you for clearing
> this up. I support your effort to obtain programing on par with the
> TI-83/84 programing. Perhaps by crippleing the programing TI had good
> intentions but it has back fired and had very undesirable and
> unanticipated consequences for everyone.

We'd take 83+/84+ and TI-68k BASIC functionality level any day, yes.

Lionel.