Book of TI Discovered
Posted by Michael on 10 October 2005, 07:45 GMT

This evening Joey Gannon was out for a refreshing bicycle ride when a series of events profoundly changed his life. As he rounded a corner on a residential street, the front tire of the bicycle struck a Voyage 200 which had been left on the roadway two hours earlier. The resulting impact wobbled the wheel resulting in a catastrophic crash involving multiple flips and culminating with Joey landing head-first on top of a nearby armadillo. The armadillo escaped with only superficial scratches while Joey mustered all his strength to crawl over to the Voyage 200 to ascertain if it was damaged. Despite the throbbing headache and a newly discovered affinity for depitted olives, Joey was able to read the undamaged calculator's screen. What it contained will surely change the world forever.

The Voyage 200 displayed a file named "The Book of TI". Through corporate intervention and a few TI staff psychologists, Joey realized that he was staring at the Holy Book of TI containing universal calculator truth. As the Voyage 200's batteries were rather low, he frantically ran back towards his house for a gross of pencils and a ream of paper. Upon returning, the Book of TI was so enthralling that after reading the several-thousand page document, Joey only had time to copy the beginning few verses before the batteries died. What he gleamed is shared below:

1 SynThesIs

1. In the beginning TI created the Educational and Productivity Solutions department.
2. The marketplace was formless and void, and mathematical incoherentness was deep.
3. Then TI said, "Let there be the TI-81"; and there was the TI-81.
4. TI saw that the TI-81 was good; and TI separated the TI-81 from all other calculators.
5. TI called the TI-81 a graphing calculator and the rest It called scientific or financial. And there were many evenings and morning, part of the product development cycle.
6. Then TI said, "Let there a EOS and let it parse equations."
7. TI made the EOS and separated the operations into their order of precedence, and it was so.
8. TI called the EOS part of the homescreen. And there was a month in the product development cycle.
9. Then TI said, "Let there be an equation editor, for entering equations, and let there be a graph screen for graphing the equations". And it was so.
10. TI created the Matrix and the List, and these were good for storing data, so It created the real variable also.
11. And TI saw that students were paying attention in their studies, so It created BASIC.
12. After It had finished with Creation, TI rested while the Beta Testers examined Its creation.
13. The Beta Testers found bugs, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
14. TI smote the Beta Testers for their insolence and rested. On the fourteenth day It fixed the bugs and proclaimed Creation to be complete.
15. TI saw all that It had made and it was good.

1. Thus the TI-81 was finished.
2. TI blessed the end of the product development cycle and sent forth Its creation to populate the Earth.
3. It said, "Let my creation be fruitful and multiply, for there are profits throughout the Earth."
4. TI breathed life into the factories and they did run assembly lines and produce many TI-81s.
5. The TI-81 did multiply according to TI's will and throughout the land teachers and students purchased them in mass quantities.
6. TI was heartened by Its creation and its popularity and so caused a great command to fall upon the TI-81 development team. TI said to them, "You shall fashion for me a helper suitable to improve the product line."
7. The product development team worked and from the case, ROM, and design of the TI-81 fashioned it a suitable assistant.
8. The team said, "This calculator was created out of the TI-81 and is a derivative work of its ROM. It shall be called TI-85."
9. And TI made this so.
10. TI fired up the assembly plants and they made TI's new work fruitful even beyond that of the TI-81. It saw how good the TI-85 was compared to the TI-81.
11. Both the TI-81 and the TI-85 were pure in body and thought and were not ashamed to be written in ASM.

1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any student in the field which TI had marketed to. And he looked at the TI-85 and said, "Indeed, has TI said, you shall not run assembly language?"
2. The TI-85 replied, "BASIC we may run but from the Z80 machine code we shall not execute or else I will crash."
3. The serpent was very intelligent and clever, and so said to the TI-85, "You surely will not crash by me!"
4. The serpent revealed himself to be David Boozer and hacked the TI-85 via memory backups.
5. The TI-85 did not resist for it was powerless in the hands of such a hacker serpent. It wailed and gnashed its keys.
6. When David Boozer ran an assembly program the eyes of the TI-85 were opened and it knew that it always ran machine code in its OS.
7. The TI-85 realized that David's ASM programs would not lead to crashes and so it opened its ROM and RAM structure to him.
8. Having opened the eyes of the TI-85, David turned over his work to Dan Eble. Dan was a very skilled programmer and worked to further defile the TI-85.
9. Out of Dan's efforts was born ZShell. ZShell opened the heart of the TI-85 to chaos and allowed all kinds of ASM to run.
10. When TI saw what had happened, It cried "What have you done?" And it wailed and gnashed Its teeth.
11. And nothing was said for TI knew what had been done. The TI-85 had sinned and its operation had been exposed to the most fundamental programming language.
12. TI was angry but could not curse Dan Eble for his work. TI said instead to the TI-85, "You will always remain overpriced and poorly programmed. And ASM programs shall be unsupported on all calculators."
13. But TI had no choice for market forces tempted even It. It fashioned offspring from the ROM and the case of the TI-85. Because of this, all calculators possess sin.
14. TI created the...

After reading the entire Book of TI, Joey ran to the nearest electronics retailer and, carrying his backlit TI-86, planted himself squarely in the middle of the calculator aisle and authoratively proclaimed one of the 10 BASIC Command(ment)s: "Thou shalt have no calculators other than TI!" Having played one too many games of Whack-A-Mole over the years, Joey defended himself from HP heathens by slapping them left and right with the 86 as they approached. Several armed men in uniforms started to haul Joey away but could not silence his cries of "TI is coming! TI is coming!" At the present time, Joey is incarcerated in a maximum security prison in Alaska. Magnus, who spoke to him by long distance telephone call last weekend, informed us of his condition: "Joey is doing well I think. He's been pacing the cell quoting parts of the TI-89 manual from memory."

There is no word yet from the federal government as to when Joey will be eligible for parole. A mental competency hearing is scheduled for next Wednesday.

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