Crazy what they have these days. Back when I was in high school (first year they required the 83) our teachers simply required we showed every step. So we could get the answer with a few key presses, but unless we showed how to get the answer we wouldn't get credit. Of course I wrote programs to solve the problems step by step and print out the answer, but I guess the system works because in the process of being clever and writing the programs I of course learned how to solve the problems step by step.

I had a nice and crazy little Chinese professor for numbers theory in college. I never knew what he was saying, but he would tell us the questions for the exam the day before. I asked him if I could use my ti-92+ and he said yes, so I just programmed in brute force algorithms, entered in the data, then sat back while the 10MHz processor crunched.

Cue the next round of profits for TI, after all, now everybody will have to buy a new and more secure model.

Or, at least, it would if anyone used the Nspire. I've never heard of a school using them - everyone has standardized on the 83 / 84.

However, it looks like that test mode doesn't apply to the model that was cracked.