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John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

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Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#311

Post by doginasuit »

tialaramex wrote: post #174
doginasuit wrote: post #33

The very concept of IP was a mistake. I understand it helped make a lot of work possible. But virtually nothing useful came from nothing, and the reservoir of human knowledge belongs to all of us. Unless you are Isaac Newton, you took a good idea and made it better or more applicable. Pretending like you own it is just dishonest. If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. --Isaac Newton

Intellectual property is a broad swathe of different rights and they each have some merits and are worth considering separately. The trademarks and the protected designations I believe help consumers to know what they're getting and protect makers against competition with inferior products which are superficially similar. So that's things like "Coke" is definitely Coca-Cola's product and not just whatever brown liqui…

Very good analysis! I generally agree, especially about patents being the most abused. Even still, I wouldn't completely get rid of them without some kind of replacement, they've made a fair amount of tech possible. Trademarks are downright useful and justified. I'm neutral about whether the grandkids get a free ride. I see artistic expression as the most worthy of some kind of protection, I just think intellectual property is not a great framing for the concept.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#312

Post by darksim905 »

bumby wrote: post #299
mothballed wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ones I've seen, IIRC, were from DHS (CBP, etc) or various border operations. They pop up on auction every so often, but I don't have the links off hand.

I know people used to look for retired police cruisers back in the day because they thought they were “detuned” but I’m pretty sure that was a resale marketing myth.

The hardware package is slightly different in PI vs CV along with in some cases a tune. The HP would vary from anywhere from 10 to 20 from Civilian to Police.

Generally though, you'd also want a police vehicle because of how well maintained fleet vehicles are in general, along with some added features and viewing the idle engine hours.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#314

Post by MSkill1 »

I've heard it said that the Right to Repair bill that Trump signed actually only applies to exhaust systems and the right to repair to meet environmental protection standards. If that's true, then this is pretty meaningless. Does anyone know the truth?

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#315

Post by SideQuark »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #280
SideQuark wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go pull their financials, stop pulling nonsense out of thin air.

...nonsense? Their average revenue for the last dozen years is reasonably close to 40 billion. 4% is a tiny fraction. Those are the only numbers I used.

And then you summarized

> 4% of ~40B times 12 years = $19B.

as if this might be close to reasonable estimate of the profit off these farm repair contracts.

But you pulled that reasoning right out of nowhere. It's simply ignorant.

Multiplying 4% times revenue? Why pick revenue? Why not profit before taxes? Why not profit after taxes? Why not any of a ton of more relevant variables?

Because you have a belief in search of some numbers to make it sound smart.

Their net profit is around 10% of revenue, not at all out of line for companies in this sector. If you're going to magically claim that 40% of this profit is from farm contracts, that is massively ignorant of what they sell.

Since you seem unable to look at their financials, there's no need for me to show you how little of their overall revenue is farm equipment (which if course makes your number voodoo even more out of touch).

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#316

Post by Dylan16807 »

SideQuark wrote: post #315
Dylan16807 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...nonsense? Their average revenue for the last dozen years is reasonably close to 40 billion. 4% is a tiny fraction. Those are the only numbers I used.

And then you summarized > 4% of ~40B times 12 years = $19B. as if this might be close to reasonable estimate of the profit off these farm repair contracts. But you pulled that reasoning right out of nowhere. It's simply ignorant. Multiplying 4% times revenue? Why pick revenue? Why not profit before taxes? Why not profit after taxes? Why not any of a ton of more relevant variables? Because you have a belief in search…

> as if this might be close to reasonable estimate of the profit off these farm repair contracts.

I took the math you proposed but I used revenue instead of profit. "Last year was 5b net profit on 44b revenue. Attributing more than a tiny fraction of profit to the right to repair stuff is wild dreams"

If the general idea of that calculation is wrong, it's your fault.

And obviously not all of that extra revenue can be profit, but most of it can. It's enough to make "tiny fraction" still work out well.

> Why pick revenue? Why not profit before taxes? Why not profit after taxes? Why not any of a ton of more relevant variables?

Because forcing people to use your parts/services brings in extra business. Revenue.

I already explained why not profit. If the company broke even, using profit would declare they could not have possibly made money on the program. If they lost money overall, calculating a percent of profit would declare that this behavior must have lost them money. It makes absolutely no sense to use profit in this calculation.

> Their net profit is around 10% of revenue, not at all out of line for companies in this sector. If you're going to magically claim that 40% of this profit is from farm contracts, that is massively ignorant of what they sell.

Why couldn't it be?

Let's consider a hypothetical. Red Moose sells $30B in tractors and the cost of doing that is $31B. But they have an anti-competitive program that brings in $4B on $1B in cost. Their overall profit is $2B, but the profit from that specific program is $3B. Despite being only 12% of their company, it brings in all of their overall profit (arguably 150% of their overall profit).

It's very easy for one piece of a company to make most of the profit. It's not magic.

> Since you seem unable to look at their financials, there's no need for me to show you how little of their overall revenue is farm equipment

They break out everything by equipment market and I couldn't find anything granular enough to figure out how much is servicing. I looked the first time I posted. If you have something better feel free to quote it. But talking about how much is farm equipment seems pointless to me. We should be looking at how much the company could plausibly make by spiting right to repair on all equipment, farm and construction and everything.

> (which if course makes your number voodoo even more out of touch)

Again, all I did was take the math you suggested except I used "revenue" instead of "profit" for a good reason.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#317

Post by IAmBroom »

darksim905 wrote: post #226
Manuel_D wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that when the firmware was locked down, it was vastly more difficult to bypass emissions restrictions. I'm not sure what you mean when you say John Deere was cheating the system. Arguably they were taking compliance more strictly before this ruling.

posit: are these considered 'road vehicles' in the same way that a car is?

My then-12yo neighbor had a hankering to drive his minibike on the road... which was illegal. He then discovered this loophole, and carried a basket of eggs from his mother's chickens. When stopped, he told the cops this was a "farm vehicle", because he was delivering them to neighbors atop the ridge.

They laughed and let him go. Technically, he was legal.

Realistically, he was learning lies work. (He's now a perpetually homeless drug abuser with an increasing criminal record - before somebody jumps to cheer for his cleverness.)

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#318

Post by ender341341 »

geekamongus wrote: post #182
ender341341 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took it as doing what too many people feels like tilting the windmill. As a society (and frankly in myself on too many issues) I notice way to much "well what can we do" defeatist attitude.

Isn't the phrase "tilting at windmills?" It comes from Don Quixote, as I recall, and suggests a fruitless effort. A waste of time.

Yeah, def is tiling at windmills, but my point is the same, I took it as them saying the public has taken a defeatist attitude and views it as tilting at windmills but here's a case where it wasn't fruitless effort and we need to view it as inspiration.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#319

Post by shuwix »

jve wrote: post #180
shuwix wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slots arw for upgrades, repair and salvage. Almost no nowadays notebooks with soldered RAM have additional slot. What of RAM takes 2 secocds with slot. Soldering lots of pins or reballing requires specialized equipment and skilled (and expensive) person. I'm going to scrap 120 almost mint condition 8th gen i5 Thinkpads thanx to 8GB soldered RAM, which is no longer enough for efficient office work on W11 + basic corpo…

What does it mean - scrap? Are you going to sell them? For how much?

They will probably get offered to schools or something for free or next to nothing. But since Covid, most schools very likely have better HW than this.

With all Intune distributed software for most departments, W11+background apps is 5+GB.

Re: John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement

#320

Post by sothatsit »

jryan49 wrote: post #187
sothatsit wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That part is easy. How much we require John Deere to do to support people repairing their tractors is not.

A tractor is not exactly bleeding edge technology...

Modern tractors can be pretty complicated machines. You could argue they should be simpler, but just like cars they’ve gotten a lot more complex in the last couple decades.
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