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Texas Instruments versus calculator hackers
November 18, 2009 | 1:56 am
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By Chris Meadows
It is not uncommon to hear stories of people jailbreaking their iPhones, or hacking Android devices to install Debian, or even installing Linux on a Kindle for the heck of it.
But before Kindles, there were calculators, and students with time on their hands have long eyed the big LCD display panels of graphing calculators and seen yet another venue for video games. One hacker even created a primitive e-book reading application, though he could only read a couple of lines at a time.
The Wall Street Journal has a story on some recent TI-83 hackers and their run-ins with cease-and-desist orders from Texas instruments. TI feels the hackers are violating the DMCA, whereas the hackers (and the EFF, who is backing them) are demanding the right to innovate.
"That’s what it’s all about — taking such a limited device and doing the impossible with it," says [calculator hobbyist Brandon] Wilson, who also likes to take apart game consoles and put them back together. "There’s no greater feeling than being told something can’t be done and then showing them it can."
This seems reminiscent of the dichotomy between Apple protecting its iPhone platform and jailbreakers cracking the protection to extend the functionality of those devices. Perhaps it might set a precedent.
Wired has screenshots of one of the games that calculator hackers have created.
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Comments:
The big difference here between Apple and TI is that Apple (and I can’t believe I’m defending them here) can take the position that they’re protecting AT&T’s network – a jailbroken iPhone with a malicious app on it could affect other iPhone or AT&T users.
TI is just trying to tell you what to do with the hardware you thought you’d purchased.
TI should be embracing these hackers who make a graphing calculator that much more valuable. The people getting upset should be the teachers who have to keep their students from playing Doom on a hacked TI.
People have been hacking their TI calculators for years. There were loads of assembly games and junk for TI-86 and such even 10 years ago when i was in high school. If TI is really going to be attack some hackers (fans of TI calcs!), then the appropriate response is: “Take the stick out of your butt.”