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Comment TI is denying programmers a great opportunity (Score 1) 417

I don't know if this has been mentioned in the comments yet, but I would like to point out that by banning third party ASM/C programming on the most recent TI calcs, Texas Instruments is blocking a generation of students from learning how to program on their own and gaining important knowledge about programming and computers that is very helpful in the future. Many students get their first insight into programming with TI calculators. Learning a lower level programming language, such as TI-BASIC or C, can be a very valuable tool for learning higher level languages. Many people here are asking why we don't just hack an IPhone. Although we can hack an IPhone, this device costs much more and is much less available than TI calcs. In schools across the United States, many students get to use TI calcs by either being made to buy one or using one provided by the school. They are there to hack. Why shouldn't we do so?
Hardware Hacking

TI vs. Calculator Hobbyists, Again 417

Deep Thought writes "Texas Instruments, already infamous thanks to the signing key controversy last year, is trying a new trick to lock down its graphing calculators, this time directed toward its newest TI-Nspire line. The TI-Nspires were already the most controlled of TI's various calculator models, and no third-party development of any kind (except for its very limited form of TI-BASIC) was allowed until the release of the independent tool Ndless. Since its release, TI has been determined to prevent the large calculator programming community from using it. Its latest released operating system for the Nspire family (version 2.1) now prevents the calculators from downgrading to OS 1.1, needed to run Ndless. This is TI's second major attack on Ndless, as the company has already demanded that websites posting the required OS 1.1 remove it from public download [PDF, in French], obviously to prevent use of the tool. Once again, TI is preventing calculator hobbyists from running their own software on calculators they bought and paid for."

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