Author Topic: OSLauncher 3.1  (Read 42057 times)

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Offline Adriweb

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #60 on: August 03, 2012, 02:59:19 am »
The staff will indeed have to make a decision on the matter - being good citizens caring about their fellow users' rights, or keeping to side with TI in not caring about users' rights :)
I believe the issue was not related to this but rather on facilitating some way to cheat, which Netham (I think it was him?) said Omnimaga is against.
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Offline Hayleia

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #61 on: August 03, 2012, 03:00:36 am »
one line of C
Code: [Select]
rename("/documents/myfolder", "/exammode/usr/myfolder");
I can't see how more simple it could be. PTTKiller is just an already-made code, it is not difficult to understand, even for newbies who never programmed.
Yes, and this line of C was not put in Ndless, but in PTTKiller, so Ndless is not a PTTKiller.
There is the same difference between a human and a human with a gun: one can hurt, not the other.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #62 on: August 03, 2012, 03:08:59 am »
Quote
There were already enough bad things said about Omnimaga elsewhere in the TI community in the past.
Indeed, but wouldn't the unacceptable move of censoring free speech and distribution of ideas and code, about our basic user rights to run whatever we please on our calculators (freedom to tinker), result in more bad things said about Omnimaga, and making Omnimaga less relevant ? :)
Perhaps the censorship exercised in the PTTKiller episode has already resulted in bad things said about Omnimaga...

The staff will indeed have to make a decision on the matter - being good citizens caring about their fellow users' rights, or keeping to side with TI in not caring about users' rights :)

Well they already made their decision a while ago, with the takedown of PTTKiller attachments and temporary deletion of the topics (they were restored upon request). It's the staff that decides how Omni is ran and you cannot dictate how the team should run their own site nor force them to run it the way you want.

Also the bad things said about Omnimaga were mostly that we encouraged students to cheat in tests (in response to staff not deleting the free prizm training answers immediately after publishing), and how we threatened the Casio community PRIZM programming future by publishing tools such as bypassing the cg10 image limitation and that similar "mistakes" done with TI calcs are why TI is so lenient about allowing ASM/C on calcs. We were often called immature for that. However, most of those negative things always came from one IRC channel/calc site in particular. That of course excludes other unrelated bad things such as how we favored quantity over quality for posts (which was not true, although some members were quite noisy indeed), liked certain jokes instead of others and how offensive remarks are frowned upon.

As I and Adriweb said, the Omnimaga team is not frowning upon the release of new tools, which are discoveries and innovations, after all. What is frowned upon is helping people cheat on tests and bypassing school calc restrictions.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2012, 03:13:40 am by DJ_O »

Offline Lionel Debroux

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #63 on: August 03, 2012, 03:14:16 am »
Quote
It's the staff that decides how Omni is ran and you cannot dictate how the team should run their own site nor force them to run it the way you want.
I know, I do run a site as well, and the first time I was moderator on a message board was about ten years ago :)
I'm just reminding the staff about the consequences of their actions, which have an effect of curbing free speech and user rights.

Quote
What is frowned upon is helping people cheat on tests and bypassing school calc restrictions.
It's up to the users of said methods to face the consequences of their actions (if any), and also up to the whole idea of standardized testing not to be so disconnected from real-world usage of calculators. That does, however, not mean that discussion and programs should be actively censored.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2012, 03:21:45 am by Lionel Debroux »
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Offline Hayleia

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #64 on: August 03, 2012, 03:20:31 am »
I know, I do run a site as well, and the first time I was moderator on a message board was about ten years ago :)
And the last time you moderated a message was with me, complaining about what I am complaining now ;)
And when I complained about it, I never mentionned Omnimaga.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2012, 03:21:01 am by Hayleia »
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Offline Levak

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #65 on: August 03, 2012, 03:22:43 am »
one line of C
Code: [Select]
rename("/documents/myfolder", "/exammode/usr/myfolder");
I can't see how more simple it could be. PTTKiller is just an already-made code, it is not difficult to understand, even for newbies who never programmed.
Yes, and this line of C was not put in Ndless, but in PTTKiller, so Ndless is not a PTTKiller.
There is the same difference between a human and a human with a gun: one can hurt, not the other.

What I was trying to tell you is that it's stupid to "ban" PTTkiller when we know that one line of C does the exact same thing.
What people don"t understand is that PTTKiller doesn't do anything special, anything that requires extensive OS hacking skills. That might be a reason why people here didn't wan't PTTKiller to be published. Who would ban a simple "remove" command ?

That's why I was reffering to the fact that Ndless is a PTTKiller, even if I don"t mind it.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #66 on: August 03, 2012, 03:26:51 am »
If PTTKiller is already in Ndless, then why was a standalone PTTKiller ever published? ???

Offline Hayleia

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #67 on: August 03, 2012, 03:27:02 am »
What people don"t understand is that PTTKiller doesn't do anything special, anything that requires extensive OS hacking skills.
And what you don't understand is that if Ndless gets permanently blocked, all your work on Theme Editor for example is useless.
Moreover, I don't care about the simplicity of PTTKiller, I only care about what it does, and in my opinion it should not be called PTTKiller but NspireCommunityKiller.

If PTTKiller is already in Ndless, then why was a standalone PTTKiller ever published? ???
It is not that PTTKiller is already in Ndless, it is that Ndless almost does not need extra code to kill PTT
« Last Edit: August 03, 2012, 03:29:03 am by Hayleia »
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #68 on: August 03, 2012, 03:32:47 am »
On the other hand, Hayleia, regardless of if PTTKiller existed or not, I doubt TI would ever change their mind about Ndless. :P They already made up their mind about ASM and C way back in 2006. That said, maybe if we play nice they'll not permanently block Ndless yet? (Seeing how OS 3.2 can still be downgraded back to the very OS that can run Ndless 3.1, despite coming out several months after Ndless 3.1, it almost seems like TI doesn't mind us running Ndless to a certain extent)
« Last Edit: August 03, 2012, 03:33:22 am by DJ_O »

Offline Hayleia

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #69 on: August 03, 2012, 03:34:01 am »
On the other hand, Hayleia, regardless of if PTTKiller existed or not, I doubt TI would ever change their mind about Ndless. :P They already made up their mind about ASM and C way back in 2006. That said, maybe if we play nice they'll not permanently block Ndless yet? (Seeing how OS 3.2 can still be downgraded back to the very OS that can run Ndless 3.1, despite coming out several months after Ndless 3.1, it almost seems like TI doesn't mind us running Ndless to a certain extent)
Yes, that is my point of view. Let's not kill the opportunity TI didn't give us yet ;)
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Offline Lionel Debroux

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #70 on: August 03, 2012, 03:34:07 am »
Quote
if Ndless gets permanently blocked
Which is very unlikely in the first place ;)
If Ndless and Ndless programs are not more developed, it's because too few people spend time on fiddling with the Nspire, not because TI did a good job protecting the Nspire (as shown by the ludicrously stupid PTT implementation). There are lots of platforms more powerful, more open and/or cheaper than the Nspire is.

Quote
That said, maybe if we play nice they'll not permanently block Ndless yet?
As you know, we have already played overly nice to TI, without receiving anything in return ;)
The gloves are off. The single relevant PTTKiller line of code (which was independently invented by multiple persons, BTW - there could have been multiple PTTKiller tools) is a result of TI being disrespectful one time too many.

Quote
(Seeing how OS 3.2 can still be downgraded back to the very OS that can run Ndless 3.1, despite coming out several months after Ndless 3.1, it almost seems like TI doesn't mind us running Ndless to a certain extent)
No. TI let users downgrade to OS 3.1 because OS 3.2 regresses on some things (and they know about it), not at all because they want to let people access native code. OS 3.2 is an unfinished, defective product, and they didn't have a choice: they needed to let people downgrade.
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Offline Hayleia

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #71 on: August 03, 2012, 03:35:55 am »
The problem is not only for it to be permanently blocked, but even blocked every years, as it is now. This way, the Nspire community doesn't grow and even decreases :(
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #72 on: August 03, 2012, 03:38:30 am »
Although we never know, with pure luck, maybe one day they'll discover by accident how to permanently lock it (requiring extra hardware or hardware modding to jailbreak your device, like with the PSP 2000), but not apply that patch as long as we play nice.

Casio never intended third-party ASM/C to be possible on the PRIZM. However, they have chosen to not block it yet, as long as we play nice. Casio already did block ASM/C before, in 2003 (years before TI), on the Classpad. It took two years for the community to convince them to at least allow C, and they eventually released an SDK.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2012, 03:39:38 am by DJ_O »

Offline Levak

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #73 on: August 03, 2012, 06:11:22 am »
What people don"t understand is that PTTKiller doesn't do anything special, anything that requires extensive OS hacking skills.
And what you don't understand is that if Ndless gets permanently blocked, all your work on Theme Editor for example is useless.
It won't be useless. Finding things like that is a game for me. I don't mind if it will be blocked.
Also, there is always a way in for Ndless if we compare to the iPhone where security is #1 concern for Apple and despite them blocking jailbreaks in each new version, hackers always find their way around the protection(s). The only problem that we have is the number of experts and volunteers to search for flaws on the platform that nobody outside the calculator world will be interested in. The time to find a flaw is thus immensely increased, but there is always a hope.
Quote
Moreover, I don't care about the simplicity of PTTKiller, I only care about what it does, and in my opinion it should not be called PTTKiller but NspireCommunityKiller.
To my mind, TI is just stupid to have put a PTT mode in the "public" OS. Why can't they make a compilation flag in order to generate PTT OSes and let the "public" OSes access ASM/C ? It just takes a few dozens seconds to install an OS, even faster if it is smaller.

The reason why PTTKiller exists is that it is a proof of concept of what can be done. Such tools to hack educational limitations would not exist if there weren't a goal for them and if TI would let users do what they want on their calc. If teachers want to limit stuff, they would only have to install a different OS. Again, this is not difficult for TI to do so, only a compilation flag, nothing more. I'am sure that, in such a way, nobody will be interested in the PTT OS because nobody use it.

PTTKiller was born by accident, a 3.1 ndlessed OS turned to PTT mode with programs in startup folder. There is no goal for PTTKiller other than being a proof of concept, to let people know that it is possible. It is like Norse : it was just a proof of concept of using the LED through software at that time.

Trust me, if PTTKiller was made for its real aim, some deep inside OS routines would have been published, for example, existing the PTTMode through a Ndless program.

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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: OSLauncher 3.1
« Reply #74 on: August 03, 2012, 09:24:49 am »
Until concerns about killing PTT were raised a year ago or so, I did not even realize PTT was part of the OS. I thought that it was part of the hardware because of the small lights on the top of the calc.