Survey posted 2004-09-18 21:29 by Morgan.

Contribute ideas to surveys by sending a mail to survey@ticalc.org.

Survey contributed by Joel Thompson.

People have offered me money for putting games on their calculator, but it's rare. I always decline.

A friend of mine tried to pay me to re-flash the ROM on his TI-83+, but I refused the money (I still re-flashed the ROM). I might accept money from a stranger, but not friends.

...And why not accept money from friends? They milk me for all I'm worth :)

Is this why you're called Wingman?

I surpriced one of my frieds selling the programs i made. I almost shot him...

That why i always put a installation divice in my programs. If a list doesnt have a certain value the program will delete itself.

Even though nobody cares cause its like a year after the poll

I'd happily accept money for any reason, but nobody's ever offered. Losers.

I write programs made specifically for each chapter in Algebra II. I charge a standard fee of $4.49 for each one, and regularly make $15 before each test. I make the program so that someone who doesn't know what they're doing can't just send it to another calculator. It's a great way to make some money.

wow, $4.49 seems a bit pricey to me...

Monopoly prices.

Yeah, I know. It's hard to beleive they do it, but they do.

Back in the day for certain tests teachers would let us put as much as we wanted onto 3 by 5 note cards. My friend would type up everything and fit it with the smallest font onto both sides of a card. He made a killing selling them.

-Samuel

My math teacher does that too, and I type it out in 4 point font, both sides. He doesn't let us sell them, though. Actually the fun thing is to find loopholes in the "3x5 notecard" rule. Whenever someone finds a loophole, it can be used for that test then no more. Some of the good loopholes are: peeling the notecard in half (without disconnecting) to double the writing space, taping several notecards together to form a 3x5 box with no limit on the depth, and taping the book to the notecard.

That last one is gold.

-W-

true, 120d\!

Whenever a teacher lets us make those, i can never even half fill one side because i can never think of anything that i would actually need to put on the note card that i dont already know by heart.

Exactly. It's not worth the effort to come up with a loophole, since I can't fill up a normal one anyway.

In one physics class that I had last semester there were SO MANY formulas, that by the end of the semester, for the final, the rule went from "one side of a 3x5" to "both sides of one 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper" and I filled up one and a half sides in very small writing (we weren't allowed to type it, or else I definitely would have). I hated that teacher...
I actually ended up making a pretty penny during that class by selling text files for the 89 that had all the formulas sorted by chapter and topic...I didn't really need the 8 1/2x11 sheet of paper, but I figured, if I didn't have it, the teacher would get suspicious. The 89 text file was more useful anyway, because, a) it was more legible and b) I could use the "Find" feature to find all equations that had, for example, anything to do with circuits by searching for the letters "V" (voltage), "I" (current), or "R" (resistance).

I love that Find feature. It really helped me on my freshmen history final. ;-)

I have physics this year (Yay!!!!). Our teacher lets us make notecards, but only put formulas on them. We give all of the notecards to him so he can inspect them (so we don't use "loopholes" lol), and then he gives them back to us when the test is given out.

i would do that, only i was caught distributing some math programs (free) i worte in class and are not allowed to any more. and what'd you use for the program protection? i use the n finance variable.

How so?

this is a general knowledge paraphrase of a file on ticalc.
apparently, unless you use the Finance app, the variable /n/ (cursive n) is never changed. So, when you make your program, include the following code at various parts in the program:
If /n/!=123
Stop
(!= is the not equal to symbol) So then from the homescreen you set the varible /n/ to be 123. Then you make a Group of your program and the /n/ variable. When you get paid, send the group over and ungroup it. Then it will autoset their /n/ to 123. Since the program runs only on calcs with /n/ equal to 123m, it will only work on clients' calcs. the group conveniently stays in archive for data safety. if their calcs ever crash (ie a ram clear) it will render the program useless... so you give instructions on reungrouping the group. If your clients are a little more calc savvy and know how to send a group, you might want to make a bit more complicated system... make a SEPARATE program that will store some kind of action ID to X or something and run your main program which recognizes the action id on startup and sets /n/ to 123. you'd need to add sequential password protection, as in each time the action ID is recognized, the client needs to obtain a algorithmic password from you based on the number of times the reset program has been run. protect all your programs and ther ya go. of course you could break it by obtaining the first password, recording it, sending the program and reset program, and running the reset program with the recorded password, but such is the beauty of protected code that nobody would figure it out unless they know how the program works. And even then you could implement a 2-variable system... you could even lightly encrypt them and store them in a custom list, the system is so secure.

i took my own advice and wrote the system. i'm submitting it tonight :D

Do you know that you just told people how to code programs while also telling others how to UNCODE your programs? They can just do everything you said backwards...

(: duh :)

I think he means a demo.

Calcsys is so cool. You can even unprotect programs with it and do stuff.

I use it to hide programs :)

at first, my math teacher allowed us to use graphing calculators on tests. and then i started to create programs on calculators and almost everyone who paid me for programs got 100. in the end, the teacher just banned graphing calculators when he noticed what we were doing.

lol, for program protection, i wrote another program that installed matrices that no one ever bothered to check since they're all noobs. after it's done transfering, i delete that program. and when they tried to send the programs, they don't send the matrices.

lol, yeah, I did that too, but I only got about a quarter for each one (they were free for my friends). The next year I sold the whole pack to the new Algebra II students for $3. Made a killing on that deal. :)

cheers to that! id love to get 15 bucks before a test! (id be a millionare by now!)

I have tried charging people for programs. The most I have ever got out of anyone is 75 cents. And my friends like to use their fists on my frail body so they can get them for free. I need new friends.

Yes, you do. :-)