Omnimaga
Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: critor on March 03, 2012, 06:40:00 am
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Since may 2011, the TI-Planet admin team (Adriweb, Levak, Lionel Debroux and me) has had privileged contacts with TI, but didn't stop working/newsing on Ndless and related things. We didn't sell our souls but tried to make everyone benefit from those contacts, both the TI community and TI.
It seems that we failed at trying to give TI a different opinion of the TI community, we have to admit it. :'(
Adriweb from the TI-Planet admins is currently in Chicago for the T3 conference and met Melendy Lovett, the 2nd most important person in TI.
Melendy Lovett told him they had to block Ndless to avoid having to deal with tools which for example, would run a CAS OS on a non-CAS Nspire, or which would attack the PTT mode.
(edit by Adriweb : These are examples that I myself refer to, I don't think she was the one to bring these examples in.
What she insisted on, and I think it's fair to write about this here, in order to have some objectivity, is that TI is liked "ruled" by its clients, and its main clients are teachers and schools. Meaning that they have to make what teachers want, and they listen to teachers and what they say. Since TI and the teachers are really close, TI can't really allow multiple opposite "development directions", and rather than do as what the community would like, they have to align with what the teachers want, most often. The thing is that there is a real trust relationship between TI and the teachers, and TI thus can't lose this trust by providing tools/devices that can (in the bad case, but since it's a possibility that cannot be marginal, it has to be said) not be trusted because some people can crack it and do things they normally wouldn't be able to do. As teachers want to feel safe about TI products, TI has to provide such products, that's why they try to block Ndless at each update : "protect the teachers" to avoid losing the trust they have established.)
Except that no such tools exists. Did she forget everything that happened (or didn't happen) between TI and its community in the last 10 months?
The OSlauncher from Ndless2 from may 2011 just doesn't run with Ndless3, and no tool I know of has ever attacked the PTT mode on the TI-Nspire.
The TI community hasn't released such tools.
So are we accused of what we haven't done?
In my opinion, blocking Ndless for such reasons a mistake. Such blocking might bring hate on most TI forums in the world... And, it wouldn't surprise me if some people started to develop and release such similar tools now...
Be very careful when OS 3.2 is released, as it might upgrade your calculator without asking for your advice - indeed a "force update" option in the TI-Nspire software update request reply has been discovered, and has allways been set to "no" up to now.
See this TI-Planet news about Ndless 3.1 being blocked in OS 3.2:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=121287#p121287
It's a sad day for the TI commmunity, as no way has been found up to now to Ndless OSes 3.0.1/3.0.2.
Meaning that TI might be very close to a secure OS, and just made a little error in the 3.1.0 OS update code.
If that error is fixed in OS 3.2 and if downgrading is blocked, that would mean that Ndless would disappear for months, years, or even forever.
As it still might be possible to downgrade classic Nspire to 3.1 by keeping (or reinstalling) Boot2 1.4 with TNOC or an RS232 interface, there is no such trick to bypass the downgrade protection without Ndless on a CX Nspire as far as I know.
What can we do?
Maybe just write to TI.
The message that should have been read by Melendy and her team can be found below:
http://tiplanet.org/forum/download/file.php?id=127
Seems our message was not understood - so knowing what didn't work, you could try sending them different messages which could work.
It's our last hope: we have something like 2-3 months to convince them.
UPDATE (by DJ): Removed broken image link (and hoping this OS doesn't contain this (http://ourl.ca/10053))
UPDATE (by critor): Fixed broken image link.
Update (by Adriweb) :
Here's a photo of me (and Peter Balyta). You can see my TI-planet T-shirt :P
(http://tiplanet.org/forum/gallery/image.php?mode=medium&album_id=59&image_id=570)
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:(
At least Ndless 3.1 will have a little time to live.
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They might have anticipated that we were going to perhaps in the future write these tools? I think that's what they were going after
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And the chances for such tools to be written just got much higher...
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they definately did.
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Well I mean as in to block any potential that they might be written prior to their decision to block it. I understand if they didn't want CAS on non-cas calculator's, but I think it was a lack of communication how we may have never intended to deliver such things
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Well, we can always go ahead and crack RSA keys... :P
Nevertheless, I think this shouldn't be considered the end-all, be-all. No one was able to launch a rocket or get someone on the moon the first time, but each step along the way there was progress. The fact that we can talk to the insiders at TI - not just via email, but IN PERSON - is pretty significant! :) No one with the Casio community has achieved that, AFAIK. (I could be wrong, though :P)
That said, we shouldn't expect open arms from TI soon, so we shall march forward with Ndless 3.2 :)
Our relationship is just like that of the iOS jailbreaking community and Apple - the devs love the 3rd party development, but they are forced to act in accordance with the higher-ups at Apple unless they change their mind. And of course, the best part: the jailbreakers, no matter what bugs Apple fixes, never give up. ;)
We have a pendulum building momentum - why not use it to our advantage? Ndless 3.1 is great enough for nearly all of us here, and we can develop platforms and apps that attract many users and developers alike. The motivation that results from that is the same that empowers many iOS hackers to find exploits to jailbreak the device! :D And besides, no one is going to update to 3.2 that fast anyways - it's not like Apple, where you hear about OS updates in every newspaper, magazine, TV show... :P **
So let's move forward with Ndless3, don't do anything to piss off TI, and who knows - we might agree to get the best of both worlds! ;)
** I don't know if the TI-Nspire Student Software has a built-in functionality for checking for updates. It all depends whether or not the student uses the software.
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** I don't know if the TI-Nspire Student Software has a built-in functionality for checking for updates. It all depends whether or not the student uses the software.
It has, together with a force update toggle.
I've set up a system that will check if this is set to "true" and report it to some advance members here.
Also, people who buy a new Nspire will be forced to 3.2.
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I've noticed that I can still easily crash my calculator by causing overflows in program outputs. Strings, arithmetic and such throw resource exhaustion, but often the programs will not (sometimes they do, it depends on how you fill up the space)
Is there any chance that could be used as an exploit? If there was, then maybe TI would fix it :P It's annoying.
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Snake X: CAS on non-CAS calculators is a side effect of native code, OSLauncher and DummyOS, all of which are fully legal (and about which manufacturers). It's not our fault if TI's CAS OS can run unmodified on calculators sold as non-CAS, but perfectly CAS-capable.
alberthro: compared to the iOS / PS3 / Wii / whatever jailbreaking communities, the Nspire jailbreaking community has a significant handicap: hardly anybody gives a damn about the platform, and that's a shame.
The fact is that two years after the public release of Ndless 1.0, we have no reasonably complete graphics library, no usable C++ programming, no usable program loader with transparent relocation support, no usable Linux port... and the list of things that do not exist, or exist only as prototypes, goes on and on. And unlike the jailbreaking communities I mentioned above, we don't have sizable sets of vulnerabilities (belonging to different classes) ready for exploitation on the next OS/firmware version, should it fix the currently used vulnerability.
And TI has lots of ways to nag people into upgrading the existing calcs, the largest of which are the upgrade checking and nagging code built into TINC(L)S, and backwards-incompatible documents. Soon after the release of the new OS, brand-new calculators will have the new OS, and probably the anti-downgrade protection.
The end result is that native code programming will belittle immediately upon the release of the OS; in fact, it will probably even belittle way before the actual release of the OS - because having to spend time upgrading our work to newer OS versions is very demotivating of a task...
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Nevertheless, I think this shouldn't be considered the end-all, be-all. No one was able to launch a rocket or get someone on the moon the first time, but each step along the way there was progress. The fact that we can talk to the insiders at TI - not just via email, but IN PERSON - is pretty significant! :) No one with the Casio community has achieved that, AFAIK. (I could be wrong, though :P)
Except that there aren't people on the moon actively trying to prevent our landing there <_<
I wonder if things might be easier to sort out if a TI employee joined one of the big forums. That way it'd be easier to contact them, and there wouldn't be multiple individual, differing complaints to their representatives when we do decide to send a couple of emails.
I know there was one person from TI who joined on UTI, but he seemed to have turned away when there was a problem with verifying his account. Maybe we could invite someone there to join us, like Austin_Casio did from Casio (if only to post some clarifications and information, which in any case is a great help).
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it will probably even belittle way before the actual release of the OS - because having to spend time upgrading our work to newer OS versions is very demotivating of a task...
Indeed... I'm currently completely demotivated at working on mViewer / nDoom, which still have minor bugs, knowing that those programs will probably become unusable for most Nspire users after the summer.
And I'm not the only one to be demotivated. The more hours we spent on Ndless, the more demotivated we probably are...
The "OS update blocking Ndless -> Ndless update using different flaws -> OS update blocking Ndless" cycle is exhausting.
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** I don't know if the TI-Nspire Student Software has a built-in functionality for checking for updates. It all depends whether or not the student uses the software.
It has, together with a force update toggle.
I've set up a system that will check if this is set to "true" and report it to some advance members here.
Also, people who buy a new Nspire will be forced to 3.2.
Hell, I want my nSpire link program back. D:
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Can't calcs sites like here, TI-Planet, Cemetech and such simply continue to not provide direct ways to bypass PTT and ways to run a CAS on non-CAS models on recent OSes? If Ndless is allowed but we don't bother porting OSLauncher for Ndless 3.1 and we don't publicly provide Ndless 3.1 compatible software to remove PTT or even performs fake reset/reboot screens, then TI is safe because pretty much all Ndless-related tools comes from the TI community and since most calc users are illiterate about Ndless programming, they'll never bother creating such program themselves to cheat.
Over here we never really help people who needs to run OSLauncher and instead we tell them they should do more effort at tests and not cheat. On ticalc.org they reject fake 83+ reset programs.
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This is sad news. Hopefully the TI community will be able to bypass it eventually! :)
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Can't calcs sites like here, TI-Planet, Cemetech and such simply continue to not provide direct ways to bypass PTT and ways to run a CAS on non-CAS models on recent OSes? If Ndless is allowed but we don't bother porting OSLauncher for Ndless 3.1 and we don't publicly provide Ndless 3.1 compatible software to remove PTT or even performs fake reset/reboot screens, then TI is safe because pretty much all Ndless-related tools comes from the TI community and since most calc users are illiterate about Ndless programming, they'll never bother creating such program themselves to cheat.
Over here we never really help people who needs to run OSLauncher and instead we tell them they should do more effort at tests and not cheat. On ticalc.org they reject fake 83+ reset programs.
Well, that's exactly what we've tried... Seems not developping/releasing/mentionning/explaining such tools is not enough for TI.
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Will the next release of Ndless be closed-source?
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Nobody can be safe from top-skilled crackers and takedown-resistant hosting.
Even if people from the TI open development community kept playing nice with TI - which nobody can guarantee, because someone may just say "the gloves are off now - I'm fed up that TI doesn't listen, doesn't learn from their mistakes, and consistently screws our freedom to tinker - anybody else could damage TI's business model quite easily.
The core functionality of OSLauncher is just five C code statements (!!), which I developed from publicly available knowledge. It's not like OSLauncher is a complex program.
GWB: making a closed source release would be useless: the Ndless sources have never clearly described how Ndless works, but it didn't prevent TI from closing the holes in the next version ;)
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Might be why we didn't convince them.
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Maybe, but I'd have lied horribly, and been completely untrustworthy, if I had told them that they could be safe somehow - even if they provided complete, official access to native code :)
Nobody can guarantee that anybody else would never, ever want to do nasty things. Any exploit could be used for the purpose of attacking TI, not just the one used by Ndless.
But I was honest in telling them that providing some controlled access to native code reduces the risk of wreckage occurring.
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Two major differences and disadvantages compared to iOS jailbreaking for instance is that the userbase is a lot smaller (i.e. less people hacking around) and a calculator is a lot less complex than a mobile phone with a full-fledged operating system (i.e. less vulnerabilities). I have to admit this is quite demotivating as far as the SDL port I'm working on is concerned.
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Well, let me compare this to the Casio scene:
We do not have a CAS model for the fx-9860GIIs and Prizms, but we have the fx-9750GII which does not have add-in support (allows you to run programs written in ASM, C/C++) and a few other shortcomings.
So we slightly modified existing firmware versions for the fx-9860GII and installed this on fx-9750GII devices without any issues. We are doing this now for three years and Casio does not seem to care about this! They had the chance to do so recently, when updating their legacy models to run on a newer CPU with lots of boot code changes under the hood. And guess what: They did nothing against running fx-9860GII OSes on fx-9750GII models (which are way cheaper by the way).
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Oh, guess what... less than 24h after the announcement of Ndless being blocked, a version of imgdump, with support for CX and CM models, appeared at http://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=4148 .
Maybe a consequence of the announcement ? :D
However, that version doesn't embed the keys, and the source code was obfuscated (but looking through the code, it's not very complicated - several lines of C, Perl or similar should be able to restore the compilable, clear-text version).
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You know what? You guys are right. Let's give up on TI and tear down all of our hard work, starting with Ndless, as well as the programs written for it.... :P
Cynicism aside, I'm not a fan of TI's actions either, but halting will only admit defeat to the battle between us and TI. It will also confirm that indeed the modern age is an age where a gigantic corporation can lock people up, no questions asked. And I'm not willing to let that happen. ;)
Some may have expressed desire to hop on the Casio train. That is fine, but I personally would not. The PRIZM (which I now own) is inferior in hardware when you compare it to the Nspire. I'd rather be in a box that has many spiny needles along its insides than in a much smaller, suffocating box.... :P
My point is this - we are indeed demotivated, but this shouldn't stop us from attacking again and again. It's understandably painful to see, but if we don't move forward with development... AND talks with TI, we won't go anywhere. It's sad that they don't realize how crappy of a graphing calculator they made (my friend recently got the Clickpad CAS and expressed much confusion with using it). In fact, the only reason it's still selling is because of apps like nDoom, the emulators, etc. Sure, the teachers are all hyped, especially if they get free calculators for being hyped. But it's not intuitive at all. They justify this by calling it a "computer"... but the last time I've checked, student-brought computers are not allowed in the classroom. ;)
I have a teacher who could care less about using a calculator, and in fact advocates against using it at all. Guess what? She constantly gets her students As... and their attention and (perhaps) love for math. Not one drop of Nspire was mentioned. Teachers who depend on fancy calculators to teach, IMO, shouldn't teach at all. :P They, in fact, are bound to later get fired, and TI's lovely market of dumb teachers and students will fall. In fact, they've already reported a loss at the beginning of this year (Q1 2012). Apparently, $80 profit/TI-8x calc isn't enough to sustain their failing business. ;)
In the end, it's a matter of generation and luck. Time will only tell if TI will relent or not. At the same time, a generation of new coders for the calcs are appearing, and no one knows whether we'll have a young ExtendeD to tackle the challenge. Will the TI community live 2, 3, 5 years from now? It depends on talent and whether TI will wake up or not to reality. ;)
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Oh, guess what... less than 24h after the announcement of Ndless being blocked, a version of imgdump, with support for CX and CM models, appeared at http://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=4148 .
Maybe a consequence of the announcement ? :D
Note that the imgdump tool uploaded to TI-Planet doesn't include the keys.
Meaning that it's useless but legal for now.
And note the OSlauncher tool just doesn't work on OS 3.1, even on classic Nspire for an unknown reason up to now (I just tried in order to be able to tell TI that there was no danger in January, hoping that they wouldn't block Ndless - I didn't dig into it). So imgdump alone is even more useless.
Maybe the uploader just wanted to send a warning to TI: "we've got working code, we know the keys, we add them and you're in trouble".
If it were me, I wouldn't have sent a warning this way, but I think that after completly failing to make TI understand our message, I have no right to judge such (desperate?) actions.
We might discuss of removing the file when Adriweb gets back... as it's simply useless. Just download it for now.
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Note that the imgdump tool uploaded to TI-Planet doesn't include the keys.
Meaning that it's useless but legal for now.
And note the OSlauncher tool just doesn't work on OS 3.1, even on classic Nspire for an unknown reason up to now (I just tried in order to be able to tell TI that there was no danger in January, hoping that they wouldn't block Ndless - I didn't dig into it). So imgdump alone is even more useless.
Maybe the uploader just wanted to send a warning to TI: "we've got working code, we know the keys, we add them and you're in trouble".
If it were me, I wouldn't have sent a warning this way, but I think that after completly failing to make TI understand our message, I have no right to judge such (desperate?) actions.
That code is making my day :D It's really, really hilarious, if you look at it.
The code itself is not compilable - when Lionel said it was obfuscated, I thought it meant encryption.
But this style is even more funny:
#IFDEF __CPLUSPLUS
#INCLUDE <CINTTYPES>
#INCLUDE <CSTDIO>
#INCLUDE <CSTDLIB>
#INCLUDE <CSTRING>
#ELSE
#INCLUDE <INTTYPES.H>
#INCLUDE <STDIO.H>
#INCLUDE <STDLIB.H>
#INCLUDE <STRING.H>
#ENDIF
file *IMAGE;
file *OUTPUT;
STATIC UINT8_T GET8BITS)VOID( BEGIN
INT BYTE = GETC)IMAGE(;
IF )BYTE < 0( BEGIN
PUTS)"GET8BITS: eof REACHED UNEXPECTEDLY\N"(;
// fALL THROUGH, TO COPE WITH FILES NOT ENDING WITH fff)0(.
END
RETURN BYTE;
END
*snip*
The first thing you notice is that the code is in all caps, which won't compile.
The second thing you notice is that the syntax is totally wrong - no brackets, oddly oriented parenthesizes.
If you think about this, the person who wrote this is trying to send a message.
He is saying that this code will ensure dumping of the TI-Nspire CX image - it would only take some regex and a release of keys to do the trick. (Basically, a threatening response to TI's actions.)
But not only that - he says two things with his code: 1) Crippling Ndless is a step backwards (notice how the parenthesizes are reversed!), and 2) what do you think we should use now? BASIC? :D (note the all caps, and the replacement of brackets with BEGIN and END! This also supports #1 in saying that this is a step backwards to something crappy like BASIC...)
Very well crafted, and nicely done! Kudos to the person who made it! :D (The author is listed as "A. Nonyme", so we may never know :P)
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Yeah, it looks like basic :D
But even though I can compile it it doesn't produce valid output.
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Yeah, it looks like basic :D
But even though I can compile it it doesn't produce valid output.
Wait, you can compile that mess? O_O
And it shouldn't/can't produce any output until the keys are added in. Note the "keys.i" file is completely blank.
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No, with a little script to replace everything, swap case and so on before compiling ;)
I just thought it could possibly work for non-cx os files, but apparently not.
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No, with a little script to replace everything, swap case and so on before compiling ;)
I just thought it could possibly work for non-cx os files, but apparently not.
Again, you know that keys.i doesn't have the actual keys inside, right? ;)
Therefore the output you get will still be encrypted.... unless you have the keys and stuck them inside of keys.i :P
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Just to state something that half of you care about, and the other half don't.
Just swich to Casio Prizm or stick with the Ti-8x series forget about the Ti-Nspire series.
If you don't like to lose programming then forget the Nspire!
thank you and just deal with updates.
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Doesn't the ARM support protection rings? Why can't TI implement security through a kernel? They could mark most of the system RAM as being off-limits third-party software, preventing people from running the CAS OS on non-CAS models. With preemptive threading, they could ensure that PTT protections would engage when requested and have full effect. The only downside to this is that it would require TI to do some actual work---which costs money---, and understand complicated, difficult things like scheduling, resource tracking, least-privilege security, APIs, and such.
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The effort wouldn't be worth it for TI, it isn't too difficult for them to just fix the flaws that Ndless uses.
No, with a little script to replace everything, swap case and so on before compiling ;)
I just thought it could possibly work for non-cx os files, but apparently not.
Again, you know that keys.i doesn't have the actual keys inside, right? ;)
Therefore the output you get will still be encrypted.... unless you have the keys and stuck them inside of keys.i :P
Ah you're right, I tested it with the non-cx key and it worked :D
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This isn't good, if we can't make ndless 3.2 [a sad event] we need to block the force update
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Teachers who depend on fancy calculators to teach, IMO, shouldn't teach at all. :P They, in fact, are bound to later get fired, and TI's lovely market of dumb teachers and students will fall.
OMG I hope so! There's this teacher I had last year that absolutely depended on the Ti-Nspire for EVERYTHING! like her whole curriculum absolutely revolved around the nspire. She even had like 3 cradle kits set up and she'd make us loggin to them and send us polls through them and everything. It wasn't the prettiest thing. Oh, and to make it better they were the ones with the touch pad too..
She'd even demo how to do problems and what her calculator screen looked like and everything. She was Nspire'd :P
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Probably the easiest way to get around the forced update would be to block the Nspire Software from accessing the internet, am I right?
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yes thats quite easy my antivirus can do that :D
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which one do you have?
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norton 360
4 euro a year is fine by me :P
for the curious who havent found it
main menu > settings > firewall > program rules
there you go individual internet access control
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You may also be able to configure your router to block access, for example by blacklisting the TI domain name, or blocking whatever port TI's software uses (which won't work well if TI checks using a standard protocol like HTTP).
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/etc/hosts is not a bad idea either. ;) (C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts for Windows users)
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Doesn't the ARM support protection rings? Why can't TI implement security through a kernel? They could mark most of the system RAM as being off-limits third-party software, preventing people from running the CAS OS on non-CAS models. With preemptive threading, they could ensure that PTT protections would engage when requested and have full effect. The only downside to this is that it would require TI to do some actual work---which costs money---, and understand complicated, difficult things like scheduling, resource tracking, least-privilege security, APIs, and such.
They should had done that since the beginning. But yeah, it's just damn more easy to just try to block Ndless than do actual work.
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The issue with that though is that a lot of people will forget or not pay attention in news and stuff and will inaverdently update anyway. Not to mention new Nspires in stores will come with 3.2.
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So TI never had any intention of allowing third-party native code ever, since that would require writing secure, reliable software. They just figured it would be easier to block us in every way they could. To make their software secure now would require significant refactoring of their code to meet the level of quality that secure code needs to meet. On the plus side, since security doesn't seem to have been on their priority list when they wrote the Nspire software, there's probably still plenty of holes waiting for us to exploit.
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TI focusing on blocking ndless is really focusing on the things that don't really count at all. Instead of trying to block third-party applications that extend the functionality of the TI-nspire (and there's no real harm done), they could have used that time to further improve the OS.
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Or they could just add protections against what they are scared we will do with ndless instead of completely blocking it and everyone's hard work
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It's time to switch our support to Casio and not give any further business to ti from us, our friends, our family members, or any potential customers that we can influence. In addition, it would be helpful to contact your school board and ask them to replace any math teachers who teach nspire operation when they should be teaching math. That should give ti a bit of an additude adjustment.
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I think they are scared of pretty much what possibilities we can come up with to compromise their work.
Or they are too dumb/can't be bothered to think about the things they are scared of and just decide to take the easier path: block everything third party.
Or both, most likely.
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...In addition, it would be helpful to contact your school board and ask them to replace any math teachers who teach nspire operation when they should be teaching math. That should give ti a bit of an additude adjustment.
Are you serious? No school board would replace a teacher because of the brand of calculator their class uses, especially because there's little interest in C/ASM programming outside of niche sites like this.
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...In addition, it would be helpful to contact your school board and ask them to replace any math teachers who teach nspire operation when they should be teaching math. That should give ti a bit of an additude adjustment.
Are you serious? No school board would replace a teacher because of the brand of calculator their class uses, especially because there's little interest in C/ASM programming outside of niche sites like this.
And I thought that the school chooses the brand of calculators for the whole year level, and some teachers actually don't like the choice the school has made. And they also have to teach the class anyway how to use the things. I agree with you Reo.
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I just edited the news since Critor was referring to me directly and what I said and Melendy Lovett, so I thought I had to edit it.
Here's what I added (it was about Ndless blocking on 3.2, when I met Melendy Lovett) :
(These are examples that I myself refer to, I don't think she was the one to bring these examples in.
What she insisted on, and I think it's fair to write about this here, in order to have some objectivity, is that TI is liked "ruled" by its clients, and its main clients are teachers and schools. Meaning that they have to make what teachers want, and they listen to teachers and what they say. Since TI and the teachers are really close, TI can't really allow multiple opposite "development directions", and rather than do as what the community would like, they have to align with what the teachers want, most often. The thing is that there is a real trust relationship between TI and the teachers, and TI thus can't lose this trust by providing tools/devices that can (in the bad case, but since it's a possibility that cannot be marginal, it has to be said) not be trusted because some people can crack it and do things they normally wouldn't be able to do. As teachers want to feel safe about TI products, TI has to provide such products, that's why they try to block Ndless at each update : "protect the teachers" to avoid losing the trust they have established.)
So, maybe this explanation(s) from TI are new for some of you (it was for me at the time), and there are valid arguments on both the community side and the teacher side, but since on this forum, it's the community who is represented, I don't think I'm going to have much success in talking a lot about TI's "closed" Nspire (even though they made a great step ahead with Lua !).
Anyway, as people said, it's always like a game between TI and Ndless, and if it's actually blocked in 3.2, it's also going to get cracked at some point, but it's going to take a while, and that's sad for people who just want to have full access to a device they bought...
I personally think that, even if I'm a TI-Planet co-admin, a lot more people would go update to 3.2 even if they know they'll lose ndless, because TI made honestly some great efforts in this 3.2 update.
The Lua inside is really great (Native Physics Engine binding is ... wow !), there are a numbers of bug fixes and a number of new features, and this can be a game changer for people who were on ndless'd OSes before but didn't really used ndless programs that often. (And I'm an example of this kind of people. I obviously do enjoy nDoom, GBC4nspire, mViewer, etc. and it certainly won't be replaced by whatever TI will do, this is sure), but as I'm a Lua fan, I'll have to update to stay at the latest things available...
(Oh well, I guess it's nice that I have multiple CX to have multiple OSes with ndlessed ones and official ones... :D
Anyway... Thanks for reading that long post, maybe some of you will find it interesting.
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You should probably choose a different text color, though. Because some people might think this part is fake news :P
And yeah I'M glad they're improving Lua, I just wish they would stop trying to block things a lot of students want to have. A lot of students want Pokémon on their calc, so gbc4nspire. Granted, a lot wants to cheat too, but everytime someone begs for an OSLauncher update we always encourage him to study more and not cheat. As for gbc4nspire and nDoom, as you say, they will never be possible in Lua, at least not as long as it's interpreted and doesn't give access to certain memory areas.
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One of the main things that teachers traditionally don't want is games... yet, TI is adding a physics engine to the OS, and a physics engine aims at stuff much more complicated than constant acceleration parabolics (and simple educational needs that don't require a complete physics engine)...
Could they explain this apparent contradiction ?
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Yeah true. Although I think it might be the fact Ndless can get calcs banned from tests, while games can't, although both annoys teachers.
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I agree with much of what Adrien said, and I too am mainly a Lua fun.
But I think that somewhere there is a solution to this, but TI isn't looking enough.
I understand TI's concerns, but they are too fast in cutting of the community.
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I understand TI's concerns, but they are too fast in cutting of the community.
Same here, and it's an understatement that they're too fast in screwing the community up :)
Whatever their concerns are, we have the freedom to tinker, and they can't do anything against it - especially not such silly actions as trying to lock down and thereby raising their exposition to severe trouble.
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Okay I cannot read that without newlines :P I get your point, but I can understand why they do not approve "jailbreaking". TI is professional and not some open-source internet user.
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I just thought that the more there are games for Ndless, the more TI will see that we don't care about cheating and also, the more people will be interested in Ndless and pressure TI not to block it. However, I am not sure if that would make them change their mind.
So don't show them you were beaten by giving up your projects, but keep on programming (without making cheating programs :P)
edit: I corrected a mistake: there was a "us" instead of a "them".
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However, I am not sure if that would make them change their mind.
Rather, I am sure that it would not make them change their mind ;)
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However, I am not sure if that would make them change their mind.
Rather, I am sure that it would not make them change their mind ;)
Agreed - gaming is probably on the teacher's "no-no" list, so it is probably on TI's too. :P
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Well, Lua allows for gaming, yet the Nspire has Lua (well a stripped-down, and significantly two-way incompatible proprietary form thereof - but Lua nonetheless) :)
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However, I am not sure if that would make them change their mind.
Rather, I am sure that it would not make them change their mind ;)
Agreed - gaming is probably on the teacher's "no-no" list, so it is probably on TI's too. :P
From what I've seen during the T3 conference, it depends what kind of gaming :P
Sure, nDoom is probably not the best option :D
But things like TI-basket or any other game that could involve math and/or physics inside, can interest TI and the teachers, really.
That's also why they did the physics engine : having realistic simulations of physical stuff hapenning, in order to better studies real-life cases :)
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Don't be too fast at saying nDoom is not interesting for teachers.
Anybody wondering how it works is going to find out very interesting trigonometry equations :)
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Don't be too fast at saying nDoom is not interesting for teachers.
Anybody wondering how it works is going to find out very interesting trigonometry equations :)
And all kinds of weird hacks for lightning fast mathematical functions and whatnot.
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Don't be too fast at saying nDoom is not interesting for teachers.
Anybody wondering how it works is going to find out very interesting trigonometry equations :)
And all kinds of weird hacks for lightning fast mathematical functions and whatnot.
@Critor and @hoffa, oh well, yes, maybe you're right :D
but it's not the core of the game (the point of the game, rather)
but yes, definitely interesting :P
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Makes me wonder--and no offense to anyone--if teachers decide to stop buying TI products because TI fails to stop the community, what will happen?
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Makes me wonder--and no offense to anyone--if teachers decide to stop buying TI products because TI fails to stop the community, what will happen?
I really doubt that a small niche-interest community is going to turn-off schools across the country.
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My calculus teacher doesn't care about gaming as long as I do my work. :D
Also, my teacher is the "special" case who actually programs TI-BASIC for 84+SE! XD
(And frequently bothers me with questions <_<)
My teacher thinks ndless is cool so she actually bought cx to play pac-man (NES)
I wish there are more teacher like this. D:
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Wow, your teacher is awesome. In my classes, if we take out our calcs without a valid reason, we get them taken. I still play games on mine, but I can't play them during class. Of course our study hall teacher lets us play games on the computers and on any other device as long as we are finished with our work.
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Os 3.2 has got me really thinking about giving up ndless. I am currently still using os 2.0 with oslauncher, gbc4nspire, and mviewer. I heavily depend on oslauncher ( I promise, I don't cheat. In my school we don't take test that don't allow cas.) because I accidently bought the non-cas nspire and wasn't about to sell it and by the cas. But the improvements brought along in os 3.2, the built in conics, x=plots, and the chemical equations just might make me give up ndless, but it'll be tough.....or I could just buy as cx cas with os 3.2 ::)
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DON'T UPDATE, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU ARE PRESSURED! AN NSPIRE CAS IS A WASTE OF MONEY WHEN YOU HAVE OSLAUNCHER!
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It really is a dilemna if you need oslauncher for the CAS, otherwise I'd easily say just update to 3.1.0.392. You could buy a CX CAS with 3.2 and then hope ndless gets on there some other way. I'm sticking with 3.1 for now, the little OS improvements shall not tempt me enough for me to give up gbc4nspire...
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I'm sorry for replying in a somewhat old thread, but has the new OS been released yet? Or is it due to come out soon? I was thinking of buying a CX and putting Ndless on it, but I need to know if I still can. :P
I hope I'm not being thick, I just couldn't tell by looking at the OP.
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My calculus teacher doesn't care about gaming as long as I do my work. :D
Also, my teacher is the "special" case who actually programs TI-BASIC for 84+SE! XD
(And frequently bothers me with questions <_<)
My teacher thinks ndless is cool so she actually bought cx to play pac-man (NES)
I wish there are more teacher like this. D:
There is even a teacher here that sometimes borrowed student's calcs to play games :P
Also welcome here AceCombat. The OS isn't out yet so you should hopefully be safe, but I think it will most likely be out somewhere this Spring or Summer. That's unless brand new calcs now already have a pre-release of 3.2 or something, though. In case, you could buy it on Ebay or something.DON'T UPDATE, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU ARE PRESSURED! AN NSPIRE CAS IS A WASTE OF MONEY WHEN YOU HAVE OSLAUNCHER!
That said even if people don't update, OSLauncher was purposely made incompatible with Ndless 3.1 to discourage people from using it anyway, to convince TI that we're not out to allow people to cheat in tests, even though it might still not be enough to convince them to stop blocking Ndless.
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No, OSLauncher was not made purposely incompatible with Ndless 3.1 ;)
The incompatibility is on TI's side: they changed the dialog box function exposed by Ndless. The modification was propagated by Ndless, which was the appropriate thing to do - and for compilation against the Ndless 3.1 SDK, the Ndless 2.0 version of OSLauncher for OS 1.7.2741 / 2.0.1.60 / 2.1.0.631 needs a modification in the source code :)
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I think it already was discussed, use search in a forum.
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Yes, but he probably misunderstood. (Because recent news went about this topic).
And I think it's quite weird for this to be your first post (And directing it to the founder of this forum).
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I think it already was discussed, use search in a forum.
Welcome on the forums!
You should introduce yourself (look for the appropriate topic)
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I'm sorry for replying in a somewhat old thread, but has the new OS been released yet? Or is it due to come out soon? I was thinking of buying a CX and putting Ndless on it, but I need to know if I still can. :P
I hope I'm not being thick, I just couldn't tell by looking at the OP.
Not yet, and 2 days doesn't make it an old thread :P more like 3 months.
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I think it already was discussed, use search in a forum.
Hey VeTRooTVex!
Welcome to Omnimaga!
Remember to introduce yourself in the Introduce Yourself Board. http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?board=10.0
Hopefully OS 3.2 won't be that bad. It may take a while for ndless to break the protection again but eventually we'll get there.
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Quick question, can we not just use Home+Enter+EE (or something like that :P) on the CX CAS and the other button combination on the other calcs to erase the current OS and then using the student/teacher software, reinstall 3.1?
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Quick question, can we not just use Home+Enter+EE (or something like that :P) on the CX CAS and the other button combination on the other calcs to erase the current OS and then using the student/teacher software, reinstall 3.1?
For now, yes. But in the next OS, they'll likely raise the downgrade limit above 3.1.
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I had a ti nspire cx running ndless 3.1, but I broke the screen today. I assumeall cx's now of 3. and i'm getting a new one. I guess I'd need to wait or switch with someone who doesnt care about ndless at my school.
Edit: Got a calc from best buy, looks like I got lucky, running 3.1.0.392 (http://i.imgur.com/1nnyo.jpg)
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It's not uncommon for stores to have outdated OSes. They probably had it in stock since last september.
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It's not uncommon for stores to have outdated OSes. They probably had it in stock since last september.
They only had 3 others in stock left, so if this happened not much later, I might have been stuck.
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But then again, at this point you wouldn't be "stuck" because 3.2 OS still allows downgrading to 3.1. The only issue would be finding a copy of the 3.1 OS (which is really useful to have anyway, in case you need to reformat your calc for some reason)
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TI-Planet has them all, doesn't it?
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Yes, but TI-Planet internally redirects to TI's site whenever possible :)
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Usually what happens is that stores will restock their Nspires once they're nearly out of stock, and TI will eliminate their older supply before releasing newer calcs or simply update them. At one point stores where the calcs sell quickly will get more recent ones, while some stores where they sell poorly will remain stuck with older ones, even more than one year old sometimes.
Also in other countries, sometimes it takes longer for something to get released. For example, the Casio PRIZM only arrived in August 2011 here, even though in USA it came out in January of that year. The Nspire Clickpad came out in 2008 instead of 2007. Where I live, the touchpad models came out 6 months after their US releases.
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A staples I frequently buy paper stuff from has extremely old calculator stock. Their display models all had NES-Style yellowed plastic :P
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Unfortunately, It does not overclock well, I finally got it stable at 198 mhz with 66 mhz AHB. My last one did 240 mhz.
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At least the TI-83 Plus series has some time to live. And there's always Casio.
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And there are always new exploits.
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The fact that we can talk to the insiders at TI - not just via email, but IN PERSON - is pretty significant! :) No one with the Casio community has achieved that, AFAIK. (I could be wrong, though :P)
Someone really did it. The manager of CASIO China educational equipment department (not the development department though )has an ID on a calc forum and someone in Shanghai has visited him several times. He is a good person. Before the 9750 series was hacked by cfxm, he had told us: "Just buy the latest fx-9750GII, not 9860. 9750 'enough' and it is 'more worthy'." Didn't he implied something...? :P
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So basically the 9750 had the TI-85 problem, where Casio decided they wanted User programming after the fact? :P
(85 had no Asm support, 86 did because TI saw what the community did with the 85 when it got cracked)
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Theoretically, if we never upgrade to 3.2 we'll have the 3.1 OS forever? And there won't be any pesky UPDATE NOW kind of stuff from the comp software if we keep the 3.1 version...right? Also, is there an option to have two OSes on one device, like a multiboot? So whenever your calc is restarted it would ask you "Which OS would you like to choose" therefore being able to keep ndless 3.1 AND have the latest version?
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Theoretically, if we never upgrade to 3.2 we'll have the 3.1 OS forever?
Yes; but then, you won't be able to use the backwards-incompatible document format used by OS 3.2 and later (which is even less efficient and even more brain-damaged than the format used by OS 1.2 to 3.1 !), and the new features provided by newer OS versions. TI is serious about forcing people to upgrade...
And there won't be any pesky UPDATE NOW kind of stuff from the comp software if we keep the 3.1 version...right?
You'll have it each time, unless you fiddle with the version number using Levak's tool.
Also, is there an option to have two OSes on one device, like a multiboot? So whenever your calc is restarted it would ask you "Which OS would you like to choose" therefore being able to keep ndless 3.1 AND have the latest version?
That would arguably be a desirable feature from a user's POV, but is an absolute no-no from TI's POV.
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I would point out that unless people have an nspire-focused class, they will likely never have to deal with foreign documents outside of people making programs, and swapping nspire BASIC for ndless is an easy choice. :P
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<necroquestion>
Is it possible now to downgrade back to 3.1?
</necroquestion>
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<necroquestion>
Is it possible now to downgrade back to 3.1?
</necroquestion>
Yes
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Yes, in fact it always has been possible to downgrade to OS 3.1.0.392 after installing OS 3.2.0.1212/1219. It's very unlikely that OS 3.3 will make it possible to downgrade to 3.1.0.392, though.