This Flash App is great!!! It is just what I need but... I see no need in paying for it, I say that if you own the calc then you can get the apps for free. I really could use this one, since both me and my dad have 89's and he is an ME (Manufacturing Engineer) and I do a lot of that myslef just for fun and it is a flash app I think many could use but no TI has to make us pay for it. I wish all flash apps were free that way more people would get the apps, visit the page more and get more people to buy their cals after they see what kind of stuff TI is giving out to the owners of such calcs.

A little preterbed programmer/enigneer,
A.J. <kaizer_911@yahoo.com>

Let me teach you a little something about capitalism, one of the core values of the government Texas Instruments, Inc., operates under:

SUPPLY: In order for any commodity to be supplied, it must be created through some amount of work. In general, the quality of the commodity is directly proportional to the amount of work necessary to create it. In most cases, people will not work without compensation, which leads to...

DEMAND: When the desire for a commodity is present in sufficient quantities, consumers will, in theory, be willing reimburse a worker for his efforts. Demand is typically jointly proportional to the amount of work necessary and the inverse of the supply of said product.

KEYNESIAN ECONOMIC THEORY: Developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes (rhymes with "rains"), these suppositions reduce economic theory to simple equations involving the circular passage of "money." Money, for the unacquainted, is a tangible representation of an arbitrary amount of work and is typically represent as one of varies types of "currency." Keyens' revolutionary theories explain that money passes from consumers to workers, who themselves pass this money on to other workers as consumers themselves. When the economic cycle stops, it results in a depression. A sufficiently prolonged depression would theoretically lead to the demise of the capitalist society that created it.

SOCIALISM: Economic policy in which the Keynesian Economic Cycle is halted in favor of a system in which every member of the society receives an equal allotment of "funds" (a term typically synonymous with "money") regardless of the amount of work involved. While its proponents claim that socialism is a "fair" (a term used to designate a relatively equivalent occurence) system, its many detractors believe that socialism stifles innovation.


Getting back on topic, now that we have a few terms sufficiently defined, we can examine why this "ME*Pro" application is not provided for free. There's no hurry, so follow along at only as fast a rate that you can handle:

1.) da Vinci Technologies Group, Inc., seeks funds so that its members may purchase commodities for themselves.

2.) da Vinci Technologies Group, Inc., finds that there is demand for "Mechanical Engineering Software for the TI-89 and TI-92 Plus Graphing Calculators."

3.) da Vinci Technologies Group, Inc., utilizes a sufficient amount of work to supply said software.

4.) Let's create a hypothetical situation: take any number of arbitrary cosumers; we'll call designate said consumers with the nomenclature "You." You want this application, thus creating demand. However, You's demand for the software is not great enough to meet the price that the software is supplied at, and thus You do not purchase the software. Some members of You will accept this situation, while others of You will choose to complain with utter irregard towards Keynesian Economic Theory.

5.) Let's take another hypothetical group, consisting of all the consumers not already members of the set of You. We'll name this group "Mechanical Engineers Whose Desire For This Software Is Suffiently High For Them To Purchase It." Mechanical Engineers Whose Desire For This Software Is Suffiently High For Them To Purchase It do have enough demand to pay the price demanded by the application's suppliers.


So, why doesn't Texas Instruments, Inc., give out free flash applications? In this case, it is because Texas Instruments, Inc., is not the creator or supplier of said applications; instead, the suppliers themselves set the price based upon the idealogy expressed above. Texas Instruments, Inc., does, however, supply the ability for companies like da Vinci Technologies Group, Inc., to create commercial applications, through which it does profit via increased calculator demand.

Occasionally, Texas Instruments, Inc., finds that creating certain free applications will sufficiently increase demand so as to profit more from the dmand for calculators than from the demand for the applications themselves. In fact, the whole bloody system is based upon the desire for more profit - what a novel idea! When such a situation is encountered, Texas Instruments, Inc., will typically release said applications into the public domain without demanding any reimbursement, and thus we find the applications in the "free" sections of the "NEW TI Online Store."


I apologize if some readers found this post overly long, simple, obvious, and/or inflammatory; however, I myself was also a little "perturbed" (note the spelling) as a programmer when I read the original post.

Cheers,
Scott

That comment has to be some kind of record for longest comment in ticalc.org history, or darn near close

eofpi and the unimatrix's 45.59985035114 perturbed cents

the "digits of pi" one had it beat easy, except it was removed.

It was my genius work that posted 50,000 (read: FIFTY THOUSAND) digits of the unique number, and the *not so* "delicious" work of none other than Nick Disabato himself who deleted it. Oh well.

-Fil wonders how his shiny $0.02 are doing, he forgot who it is that now owns them, but if it's you, please let him know how they're doing, thanks

I think PAD has the longest with his thesis on how programmers don't get the respect they deserve.

Thank you Mr. Economics. I am understand all of what you said and am aware of such goings on, but you must agree that there are Flash Apps that we feel should be free or wish were free, like the sketchpad and geomtry tools. I was merely stating the fact that it would be better if the app was free I do know that somewhere someone will buy that app untill I really really need that app I will do without but it would make life simpler for me and my father if we could get it, both he and I fell that such a resource as the calc app should be free all in all we spent $162 a piece for the wonderful 89 not to mention an 86, and several other calcs from them. And have you looked at the Free apps from TI they are language localization (I use the german one), the OS (which should be free if not then something wrong there), stats (just better than the built in stats functions), and Finance (most of which can be done in smaller progs just as good).

>>I apologize if some readers found this post overly long, simple, obvious, and/or >>inflammatory; however, I myself was also a little "perturbed" (note the spelling) as a >>programmer when I read the original post.

yeah it was a little long but some people need it and you felt I needed it apparently. And excuse me, I spelled perturbed wrong, I am a Programmer/Engineer spelling is one of the last things on my mind (And I know that phrase just opend up a whole line of other tangents to take this thread to but oh well). Yes I know spelling is important but I am not a writer or english major so I see that it's ok for a mistake here and there and besides its just a site for calcs not Engilsh.

A programmer/engineer,
A.J.

It seems you entirely missed my point, which is that we have no right to judge what should and should not be free in a capitalist society.

If enough people wanted their 89s in French, you can bet that TI would charge for the language localizing apps; as it is now, they stand to make more using the localization as a tool to sell calculators and not as something for sale itself. But this is a greedy American corporation, and it wants to profit - as it should.

I merely intended to refute the following statement from you. . .

> I say that if you own the calc then you can get the
> apps for free.

. . . and went on ranting from there. That statement is one of the most ignorant I've read in weeks - if we followed that philosophy, we wouldn't have companies like da Vinci making these apps AT ALL.

Not only is it childish and demanding to think that you deserve all applications free of charge, but it's also just plain stupid when you realize that what you're proposing would mean that we would have _no_ ME*Pro app whatsoever, rather than the ability to obtain ME*Pro for a fee.

ok fine, I'll agre it shouldn't be free, but wouldn't you agree that $50 is a little outragous..I mean it's 1/3 the price of the entire calculator, so here's the "REAL" supply & demand cycle

Free:
not likely, since someone(a third party) paid to have it made, they want reimbursed for their time and effort

$20-$30: reasonable, people might moan a little, but they WILL spend that on a calculator app..ie: I bought sketchpad for the 89

$50: outragious, which leaves two options
option 1: no one buys the program, thus no money is gained, and it was pointless to make it
option 2: you tick off the hackers like wormhole (god rest his soul) who eventually crack your security for the calculator, admittedly, not soon, but it will happen, then they buy one copy, and it's distributed for free as warez, and no one buys any copies, thus it becomes free...now I ask, which seems more likely, and which price seems more sensible?,
it's not fact that they are charging, it's how MUCH they are charging

It is also odd that they don't just charge a whole dollar amount.

They do that so they can advertise it as "under $50."

Not only do we have the right to judge any human activity, it is our moral duty. To exclude a whole field of activity, economic transactions, would be like excluding murder with the excuse: "Well he is a murderer you know, he is like that." It is our obligation to speek up whenever we encounter things we do not agree with.

On a side note I must agree with you that this particular complain was not very important. There is so much unfairness ( <= is that the right word )in the world that the pricing of calculator software seem rather irrelevant.

"You cannot take what you have not given, and you must give yourself. You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or it is nowhere."

Hello again,

>If enough people wanted their 89s in French, you can bet that TI would charge for the
>language localizing apps; as it is now, they stand to
>make more using the localization as a tool to sell calculators and not as something
>for sale itself. But this is a greedy American corporation, and
>it wants to profit - as it should.

Yes, I agree that if more people wanted a language other than english TI might charge people for the App, but the smarter thing to do here would have to sell the calcs with the language on them in their respective region (ie french in France, German and Dutch in Germany and surrounding area, etc).

>I merely intended to refute the following statement from you. . .

>> I say that if you own the calc then you can get the
>> apps for free.

> . . . and went on ranting from there.

I guessed that that is what started both you and me off on this long debating thread here.

>That statement is one of the most ignorant I've read in weeks - if we followed that
>philosophy, we
>wouldn't have companies like da Vinci making these apps AT ALL.

I beg to differ, some compaines make apps and software for free but to get all the benifits of the software they give out a free version and for a small fee, not this $49.50 which is rather high, to get the reg code and "unlock" the program so it has no restrictions, Winzip is a great example of this.

>Not only is it childish and demanding to think that you deserve all applications free of
>charge, but it's also just plain stupid when you realize that
>what you're proposing would mean that we would have _no_ ME*Pro app whatsoever,
>rather than the ability to obtain ME*Pro for a fee.

Childish I don't agree with that, but yes it was demanding, but I feel that $49.50 is a little high esp for a calc app that is really useful. But some apps should be free, some I agree schould be for a price but not $49.50, maybe $10 or $15 that is a little more reasonable. Esp if ME*pro was priced at that da Vinci Tech. could make more money (more product sold more profit) but yet you will come back saying they make more the other way which is true but their customer base will be smaller, less people buying more money, eventually both paths would cross at some point or another but I feel that a good customer base is better than few customers and a lot of profit because with the large customer base they could make more money by word of mouth or slowly increasing the price, small enought to not be noticable but big enought to keep the profits coming in.

Well that's all for now from me, lets see what Scott has to say about this,
A.J.

>> ...but I feel that $49.50 is a little high esp for >> a calc app that is really useful.

so, the better a program is, the less it should cost?

i really can't understand why people are complaining so much about this program's price. it may seem high to high school students, but for a professional the price seems low or, at least, average.

"If enough people wanted their 89s in French, you can bet that TI would charge for the language localizing apps"

Not likely

Wow, this could easily be summed up in a much shorter statement:

"People worked hard programming it and they want to get paid for it."

Thanks for your time.

-Fil and his former $0.02

A Modest Proposal would not be the same if it was summarized just as shortly.

Yes, and my reply to this is the same as it was last time:

duh

I mean to Scott's completely idiotic comment

Scottx0rz j00 sux0rz ;)

It is disregard, not irregard!

Thanks for an enjoyable (if somewhat drawn out) post.

--Mike

Mr. Economy,
What the hell is wrong with profit? Nothing. These people have to make a living too. The price they set, they feel will maximize their profit and reimbuse their workers. It obviously must be or they wouldn't start ME-Pro out at $49.50 and EE-Pro wouldn't still be the same price it has been for so long. That, and I highly doubt many developers or calculators at ticalc.org, "demand" this application very badly. It wasn't aimed at this audience, but, duh!, mechanical engineers themselves. They demand it, and would likely give da Vinci Technologies Group Inc. their "reinbursment".
Oh, and yes, I found this article, VERY long, VERY stupid, and having VERY little point.
Geez, who's the one grumbling about the price?
- Luke