Finally, some contests to enter. I have to think of something to do!

The Graphi drawing tools are IMPOSSIBLE to use!

You can upload your own picture (just choose "upload a background image").

Do you think Spencer Dubya will upload the one he made last year? (See Web Page link) I don't think he's here any more. We should tell him about this.

WOW! That one is awsome! Where exactly do these go on your calc?

Hey Zarel, thanks for the heads up, I really appreciate it. I'm definitely game this year, and hopefully I'll have a bit of community support too. I went for the $8400 scholarship too, as I'm starting college this year and really need the money.

(For those that don't know, I made the image Zarel linked to in Photoshop, but much to my dismay, there was no upload form on the site. We found out that all entry participants had to use TI's cheap Paint knockoff to create their designs. So after much debate, I went forward with the contest, trying to copy over Tux (see link). It took close to two and a half hours, and what I didn't know at the time was that there was a short server-side session timeout. So when I hit "Submit", the design wouldn't go through. I tried it again, and it didn't work. I got pissed, bugged TI about it, and finally got to talk to their design team, who eventually determined the session timeout to be the problem. So I went ahead and submitted some real simple design that actually went through. Then to try to compete with the vote-stuffing undeserving winners (if you saw their designs, you'd wonder how they got two votes.) was impossible. So I just ended up rooting for Peter and DarkAuron who I knew and who had really good designs.)

I'll have to think of something new this year, but I do like the STS-109 idea...

<plug type="shameless">follow the URL.</plug>

I found out something AWSOME about the ticalc.org website:
if you translate it into english while it is already in English, the words "About" are changed to "Butt"!
I am not jokeing! Try it!

^see link^

It is too long to put as the URL.

Lol, this contest sucks. :)

Ummm... I don't see how that's funny.

1. Like somebody else said, how is this funny?

2. Erm...did you even bother to take a look at the prizes?

To clarify: I was referring to the GraphTI contest. The person that won used a default background and put the words "Math Rox". They obviously knew nothing about graphics design and therefore they won unfairly. Another person spend a lot of time in "Searing Fire", but they lost.

I was also referring to how poorly the contest was designed (last year at least) and to the vote stuffing. To me, it was humorous to see that TI, being a large company, allowed such tomfoolery.

NOTE: I was not refferring to the scholarship contests or to the essay contests. Those were not humorous in the least. Sorry to anyone who may have been somehow offended by this comment. I did not think that it would be treated so critically. And yes, I did take a look at the prizes.

---<><>LOOK HERE, ATTENTION!<><>---

Cool, now I have your attention. Please check out my entry and see if you would be interested in voting for it. The website address is below. I had to put 4 spaces on the address so that it would display. Take them off so you can visit.

Please, I lost last year *sob*, not that I'm expecting to win this year, but I want to at least have a chance. Thanks.

http://w ww.84silver.com/contest_br owse_view.ph p?entry_id=ND Ez&page=1

YEAH! more contests to enter, and the $8400 scholarship would be nice also!

Less vote stuffing? From the rules (see link above):

> Visitors to the Website may vote only for one (1) design form each category during the Promotion Period.

Sounds like that's what they want too. One can only hope that they're cool enough to put technical countermeasures in place as well as legal ones.

Yeah, I was surprised too considering last contest, now you actually have to sign up for an account and can only vote once. Good job TI, the voting's actually fair now...

I say we have our own sub-contest, and we choose a submission we all like, and then we do a little vote-stuffing of our own, for the ticalc.org winner!

Or maybe not.  (Blast you, slimey_limey!)

What did I do this time?

Your comment containing the relevant line in the rules was posted before my comment.  

Vote-stuffing is still vote-stuffing (which we dislike) no matter who does it.

The idea was to fight fire with fire.  If everybody vote-stuffs, then you have to do it to win.  I really don't see anything wrond with it if everybody does it.  

(Cue trite comment about people running off cliffs - this is different.)

Not nessisecarally, if someone feels strongly about a certian one then they are more likely to do it, but if there not so sure they are more likely to only prompt one vote or none

That's true, and there also shouldn't be much (if any) vote-stuffing this time around, since the system's much better.

Vote stuffing is still easy to do. It's not like it's absurdly hard to get an account, or use various proxies to get around the 1 vote per computer rule. I say we should still counterstuff.

Counterstuffing is not a solution.
Just ignore the contest, it's just a waste of everyone's time.

I couldn't agree more. Why does TI even bother? How many people actually buy these stickers?

enough people to sell them and have a contest (two years running)

But they never even sold the one from last year because it SUCKED so badly!

I wouldn't buy them

"Word".

I also noticed that TI is NOT selling last year's winner. Lol. OF course, nobody would buy it... So...

its following me...
"WORD"!!!!!!!
I hear it everywhere!
What does it mean?
What unforseen secrets does this single word comtain in it's characters?

Heh heh heh...

If I told you, I would have to kill you! XD

FIRST YOU WOULD HAVE TO FIND ME!
XP

straight from wikipedia.com:
Word (Slang)
"Agreeing with something; Can also mean 'really'"

I've seen an emoticon on IPB and phpBB boards with a sign reading 'Werd'. Same thing, right?

unfortunately yes

Yeah, but who's going to really stuff votes? Before it was so easy even complete n00bs could do it but now it actually takes a little effort. Besides, even if there is still vote stuffing going on, counterstuffing isn't going to make it fair.

Check out the 3rd placed entry. It looks like crap, really, it's just a very very fast map of the earth. It also has 200-odd votes for it. The kid lives in a town (Baggs, Wyoming) of 348 people. Either he's really, really popular on MySpace or he convinced the /entire town/ to vote for his entry.