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posted by
janrinok
on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:40AM
from the you-don't-own-anything-anymore dept.
from the you-don't-own-anything-anymore dept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JCh0owT4w
When it comes to repair, farmers have always been self reliant. But the modernization of tractors and other farm equipment over the past few decades has left most farmers in the dust thanks to diagnostic software that large manufacturers hold a monopoly over.
Farmers using Eastern European cracking software for their tractors, and MS, Apple, etc. want to stop them.
Related: Right to Repair
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Tractor Hacking: The Farmers Breaking Big Tech's Repair Monopoly
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday February 03 2018, @08:22AM (3 children)
This has got to be a major frustration for farmers. Something go amiss with their machinery - No fun at all.
On a farm. things HAVE to happen On Time... or the harvest you worked so hard for is in jeopardy of being lost. Oh how a farmer must cry to see the rain falling on a harvest being rained on, while his tractor sits in a barn with problems - knowing full good and well what he worked all year for is going to go up in mold, mildew, and rot - because he did not harvest when he was supposed to. Nature is not going to go "on hold" while you fix your tractor.
Everyone knows how frustrating it is when you gotta go to work, but your car doesn't work. Yeh, we have AAA, and taxi service. But the farmer? Who does he call? Its not like he can easily tow the thing to them. He's gonna have to call up someone hours away, and arrange for a "field call", while the clock in ticking away on God's time - which holds for nobody.
Frankly, I am surprised farmers put up with it, but I guess they have to - for the same reason we put up with Congress and Microsoft: Too big to fight.
We should be having standards of interoperability, but instead, all this "rights legislation" being passed by our Congress is only resulting in the formation of technological cliques of machinery that does not play well with others.
We would be furious if someone was teaching our kids to behave this way... forming cliques for the express purpose of excluding others from the community... but we pass law to foment us having our machinery and technical infrastructure to do this?
And we still call those people "The Honorable ... "???
One of those people shake my hand... I want to wash... soon as possible.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @03:26PM (2 children)
I am not really understanding why they don't collectively form some sort of trade group of farmers and tell the companies to fuck off so bad that it'll hurt when we only buy used equipment until this shit stops.
And then do it
of course we already know the indians in india are using our last ditch effort antibiotics so they can make more money. I say strap those guys onto the broken tractors surrounded by chickens that are hosts to MRSA SARS and the rest of it and have them play chicken with the law to see which gets fixed first. If they die before the chickens, lawyers, or lawsuits do, then that's fine because one problem will be solved via their inability to curtail their own greed.
Then we can hope that legally the same thing will happen to the tractor companies. maybe we can ship them some infected chickens prepared as a meal.
really people besides the humor in the post, I really dont understand why consumers put up with so m uch that they do. they get the shaft and keep getting it and even willingly upgrade to worse problems because shiny and new. Then when it breaks they are out of luck. why? i mean this isn't even an obscure issue, its been in the news numerous times. those farmers have already found each other in europe at least.
If apple and microsoft want to stop them from being able to fix the stuff they own, then FUCK THOSE COMPANIES. Let them settle the legal matter in ireland and fuck the farmers there if someone has to be fucked.
then when that happens, maybe ireland will do something about how they are the bitch of companies the world over because of the tax policies that just make it worse for everyone else except for the shareholders.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by dwilson on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:00PM (1 child)
Many of us DO buy, and only buy, used farm equipment. So much so, that the price of more sought-after tractors from the 1980's (meaning those that have the horsepower to pull the modern, wider implements) gets pretty crazy. Here in Canada, you can pick up one model of Steiger or Versatile 4WD tractor for a few thousand, but go up a model (and the corresponding HP increase) and the price jumps to upwards of fifty to a hundred thousand. And they're still hard to find, and sell quickly.
But it's not all doom and gloom for the equipment companies. There's a new breed of farmer now, generally younger, who inherited family farms and didn't pick up enough of the fix-it-yourself along the way. A thirty year old tractor piles up on you? You either fix it yourself or call the local ag mechanic and pay him to deal with it, if he's available. A modern, under-warranty tractor piles up? You call the dealer and they send someone. Immediately. There might still be fees, but not enough for them to care. They get prompt service, call it a cost of doing business, and onwards they go. It's all they know.
There's more to it than that, of course. The family farms with tens of thousands of acres to farm? They'll buy new stuff. And whole spare units, to. When you've got that much land under the plow, it's actually pretty hard to lose money, provided it's spread out enough that local weather effects can't hit everything at once. Too much/little moisture for the whole region is about all that can do you in, at that point. There's always money to spare for equipment upgrades at that point.
I assume the corporate farms also don't bat an eye at buying new equipment every few years for the warranty, because that's 'just business'. I can't speak to that personally though; For all the talk about the family farm dying and corporate outfits consuming all, I've yet to actually see a truly corporate farm. I'm sure they exist.. somewhere.
- D
(Score: 5, Interesting) by HiThere on Saturday February 03 2018, @06:38PM
The family farms that *I* know are on the edge or even losing money. I doubt that any "family farm" makes huge profits from anything legal. no matter how much land they have. Not unless you're talking about a place where the "family farm" is really owned by someone who's a manager rather than a farmer, and has a bunch of employees with less rights than share croppers had.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.