191–200 of 229 posts
I bet in 5-10 years they'll be back to doing everything they can to make repair impractical.
Deere fought this tooth and nail and will probably still not play nice. They are being forced to do this and must continue to be forced.
Deere's forgotten the point of their business: to provide farmers with what they need to do their jobs. When you make the company about maximizing profit, you interfere with the purpose of your business. You now get in the way of your customers getting what they need and want. This has been proven by Deere, getting in the way of farmers fixing their equipment. Deere could have instead opened their business more to re…
That’s not the point. That's marketing.
> When you make the company about maximizing profit, you interfere with the purpose of your business.
Maximizing profit is the general purpose of business in a capitalist society. Serving other ends is a means to that end, not the purpose.
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If the tractor is my property, I don't understand what gives John Derr the right to prevent me from modifying it how I see fit. Imagine they did this with a physical object, broke into your house and stopped you from opening the engine - that would be tresspass and a dozen other crimes. Why is it legal just because it's digital? This is why people are calling it Neo-feudalism or digital feudalism, the relationship is…
> I don't understand what gives John Derr the right to prevent me from modifying it OP described exactly what prevents you from modifying hardware you own how you see fit: > hardware manufacturer from making the firmware impossible to modify for example by using hardcoded signature verification. If you don't understand this entirely technical mechanism, then you should read into it to find out what we're really up ag…
I was trying to point out that securing the chip against the owner of the tractor should not be legal - in the same way that taking away a wheel from your tractor would not be allowed -it now your property
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> I don't understand what gives John Derr the right to prevent me from modifying it OP described exactly what prevents you from modifying hardware you own how you see fit: > hardware manufacturer from making the firmware impossible to modify for example by using hardcoded signature verification. If you don't understand this entirely technical mechanism, then you should read into it to find out what we're really up ag…
I think we are sort of in agreement, that if John Deer is allowed to encrypt firmware such that the user cannot access it, then we are stuck. I was trying to point out that securing the chip against the owner of the tractor should not be legal - in the same way that taking away a wheel from your tractor would not be allowed -it now your property
On the technical side, the difficult bit is coming up with ways that discern the owner of a computer from a mere possessor of a computer. There are many legitimate cases for protecting against a mere possessor (evil maid, datacenter, theft prevention), to the point that blanket outlawing processors with built in code signing isn't going to happen. The only way I've thought of is through some sort of time delay where if you put the processor in a debug mode and let it sit there for a period of time (say a week), you'd then be treated as the owner and could reflash signing keys etc.
The simple legislative approach would be to make it so that a manufacturer has to create an automated process of signing code hashes supplied by legitimate owners, that would allow the code to run on the owner's hardware. But this would just be constraining the centralized power that manufacturers have and hoping the law would be strong enough to enforce it (and keep enforcing it), rather than reforming the capability to begin with.
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The damage is already done. MBAs had no long-term vision, so in each company they infested, they made poor strategic decisions such as moving manufacturing overseas, which then forced other companies to move their manufacturing overseas. The countries they chose have zero respect for intellectual property. So now what's left are zombie companies milking their cash cows dry as international competitors arise and take…
Solid argument. No chief executive with an MBA has ever contributed positively to the company they run. ::eyeroll::
But he is right in the sense that a company leader needs to occasionally leave the meeting room and get in the factory floor, get direct exposure to customers and see things firsthand.
We would be already in Mars if we had not stopped doing that.
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It's not controversial. Everyone knows the bill NY passed was a joke, from the voters to the legislature to the lobbyists.
I think Louis Rossmann said they'd worked on that bill for over 7 years, desperately trying to keep it from being compromised into oblivion. Then, on the eve of passage, the legislature amended away everything that mattered in it by adding an exception big enough to drive a... John Deere tractor through, and the governor (who was part of the process) quickly signed it into law. https://youtu.be/k9kXnm9uW5k . Keywords…
I don't see much recourse, other than substantial and continued boycotts for all companies pushing this garbage.
I am not buying mobile phones anymore, since my last one broke due to overheating, and in spite of the warranty terms not forbidding custom ROMs they did not honor it.
If you sell hardware you can bundle it with open-source software that people are free to modify.
Or you can sell it without software and other vendors can supply closed-source software that can't be modified, but you can't have exclusive agreements with those vendors or prefer one over another.
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"Well... we're waiting!" What's the very good reason? Because it's certainly not apparent to me.
The very good reason is that, as the parent commenter wrote, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty act makes it illegal for manufacturers to deny warranty service because of third-party modifications or repairs, unless they can demonstrate the third-party modification/repair caused a defect in the original product.
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Imagine it is 2080 and the news of the day is that farmers will be allowed to buy "BioSerum" that extends the expiration date of their genetically engineered HyperHorse by one month.
Imagine it is 3080 and farmers are now allowed tax free access to all of the sunlight that falls on their land.