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We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

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Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#271

Post by lelandbatey »

harperlee wrote: post #252
elwin wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world probably needs less content creation. We're long past the point where there are too many useful books to read in one lifetime. Even in narrow fields, we're producing comedy television, historical fiction novels, or cat pictures faster than one person could consume them all. You could spend a lifetime just researching what's worth consuming. With this kind of overproduction, it's no surprise creators can't m…

That is a ridiculous argument. The more content we produce, the more quality and diversity you can get in the corpus that you will read; the more choices that you can make. There might be infinite insight in the contemplation of cat pictures. :) Or from another angle: why don't we destroy half of the content of the world? Surely we have enough with the remainings. If we were to find tomorrow another intelligent speci…

What you said is hypothetical, but the question we face today is "should we put limits on our ability to transmit and receive information in the name of incentivizing content creators to create when we already have many lifetimes worth of content?"

Right now there are limits on what we can communicate, limits placed in the name of "protecting content creators." These limits are a kluge. For example, what if I where to take a song, compress it a ton, then read out loud the base64 representation to a friend who is transcribing it.

Have I infringed the copyright of that song? Or was I simply describing it so precisely that I allowed my friend to reproduce it flawlessly? If I sing the lyrics to my friend and he learns that, are we breaking a law? And more importantly, should we be breaking the law when we do this?

Why can't we communicate whatever we want? Why haven't we accepted that the progress of technology will slowly make all things a matter of "communication"?

I think that part of the answer to that question is a deep anxiety over such a profound shift in the "business" of our society. It would mean much would have to change, and while I'd argue that change would be for the better, I understand that anxiety.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#272

Post by djb_hackernews »

elwin wrote: post #222
api wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Create less and have a real job." Wow. I see lots of this kind of sentiment when I bring this up, but yours deserves credit for being exceptionally honest.

The world probably needs less content creation. We're long past the point where there are too many useful books to read in one lifetime. Even in narrow fields, we're producing comedy television, historical fiction novels, or cat pictures faster than one person could consume them all. You could spend a lifetime just researching what's worth consuming. With this kind of overproduction, it's no surprise creators can't m…

Imagine a futuristic utopian human society. Are the people writing poetry, playing instruments and painting murals or are they assembling widgets in a factory?

Humans are really good at creating things, that's what I think we are here to do, not "work".

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#273

Post by jessaustin »

chacham15 wrote: post #162
apricot wrote: post #48

Richard Stallman spent the last 30 years telling us this would happen. As soon as books become computer files, you don't buy them anymore, you lease usage rights. As soon as tractors contain computer code, you don't own them anymore, you are granted a license to use them. When will it stop? More and more everyday objects are incorporating software and firmware in many different forms. I remember reading Stallman's sh…

The real problem here isnt that we're leasing things (we have leases for cars, houses, and many other physical goods). The problem is that the manufacturers mix leasing and owning. I.e. you own the device, but lease the software. I think that everyone would be radically happier if you either leased everything or owned everything. This is partly because when we buy something at a store, we expect to own it, not own pa…

In a world where nobody owns tractors and just leases them...

Tractors manufactured in the 1960s are still in regular use today, to a far greater extent than e.g. automobiles of that era. Although there are regular improvements, the core task of pulling implements across a field has not changed, and the same giant piles of steel that function today should still function decades from now. The portion of tractor owners and users who would welcome the dystopia you envision is minuscule.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#274

Post by wmeredith »

zzalpha wrote: post #104
toufka wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Deere was the Apple of tractors, 20 years before Apple was Apple. It's killed off all the competition [1] for their tractors' ability to "just work" - even at a premium. Deere coupled high quality hardware with high quality service, whereas most other tractors tried to compete on cost by dropping one. Apple vs HP; Deere vs Case. It served them well in the long run, if made things dicy early on. There is no compe…

Put slightly more technically: there are natural barriers of entry to the marketplace that make it tough for a disruptor to displace a incumbent monopolist (or in this case oligopolist... Deere basically splits the market with a few other competitors, all of whom collude on this issue).

Would this be considered cartel behavior?

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#275

Post by frik »

apricot wrote: post #48

Richard Stallman spent the last 30 years telling us this would happen. As soon as books become computer files, you don't buy them anymore, you lease usage rights. As soon as tractors contain computer code, you don't own them anymore, you are granted a license to use them. When will it stop? More and more everyday objects are incorporating software and firmware in many different forms. I remember reading Stallman's sh…

It's not only about tractors. Cars and other equipment are based more and more on computers too. I saw 60+ year old tractors and cars, all work fine.

For expensive physical products, I would rather choose one with a high quality and a long lifespan with no computer in it at all. There are only a few left like Mercedes-Benz G-Class, Land Rover Defender, Hummer H1, Jeep Wrangler, Caterham 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_G-Class , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Rover_Defender , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummer_H1 , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep_Wrangler , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterham_7 .

Watching the Top Gear Specials where they drive with old cars through foreign countries on crappy roads - I always think about how would a modern car survive that - it wouldn't. For example the Porsche 924 (1980s) was cars with a lots of computer chips, it was completely dead (the dashboard lighted like a Christmas tree, the windscreen wipers was the only thing working) after a few days driving through Africa.

Richard Stallman was right. The GNU (L)GPL 2+ is a very good choice for open source projects - at least for bigger (for smaller BSD/MIT is good too).

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#276

Post by elwin »

harperlee wrote: post #252
elwin wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world probably needs less content creation. We're long past the point where there are too many useful books to read in one lifetime. Even in narrow fields, we're producing comedy television, historical fiction novels, or cat pictures faster than one person could consume them all. You could spend a lifetime just researching what's worth consuming. With this kind of overproduction, it's no surprise creators can't m…

That is a ridiculous argument. The more content we produce, the more quality and diversity you can get in the corpus that you will read; the more choices that you can make. There might be infinite insight in the contemplation of cat pictures. :) Or from another angle: why don't we destroy half of the content of the world? Surely we have enough with the remainings. If we were to find tomorrow another intelligent speci…

Yes, more content adds more value. But past a certain point of saturation, it no longer adds enough additional value to compensate its creators. My argument is that we are long past that point.

Which would be more valuable, doubling the world's content, or doubling the amount of time and money to spend on it?

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#277

Post by pluma »

a3n wrote: post #251
dublinben wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to start is to not buy a vehicle with a hundred proprietary computers in it.

How do you search for and verify one of those vehicles without a computer? Also, I haven't bought a new car in many years. Is there something like a EULA buried in the small print? And I don't imagine buyers on the secondary market sign anything. Or will it become illegal to sell used cars because the software license doesn't allow for transfer?

In the US? Possibly.

In the EU? Only if TTIP gets signed.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#278

Post by ilikepi »

digler990 wrote: post #255
chacham15 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem here isnt that we're leasing things (we have leases for cars, houses, and many other physical goods). The problem is that the manufacturers mix leasing and owning. I.e. you own the device, but lease the software. I think that everyone would be radically happier if you either leased everything or owned everything. This is partly because when we buy something at a store, we expect to own it, not own pa…

I feel like the term "lease" isn't appropriate unless there is a viable way and underlying plan to eventually return it. When I lease I car, I have to return it. They don't sell me the car under the auspices of a lease, with no way to ever return it, and still restrict my rights on what I can do with it.

Given enough time, software eventually becomes unsupported, and then -- perhaps after more time, but perhaps not -- unusable. In effect, this is the return at the end of the auto lease. It's not a perfect analogy (really nothing ever is), but it's pretty good, especially I think for people not used to thinking about this issue with software and other digital goods.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#279

Post by Dylan16807 »

mcguire wrote: post #149
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iowan here. There are almost no family farms left at all. My neighbor would desperately like to be a farmer. But the scrubby 40-acre field across from his house just sold for $400,000. He'd get maybe 120 bushels of corn off of it. Current price per bushel: $3.80. So $456 income per acre == $18,240 per year. That's half the mortgate payments. Not to mention the cost of working the field. So a lost cause. The 13 farmer…

One wonders how the corporations farm them. The situation you describe doesn't sound like it would be any more economically feasible for them to work than your neighbor. (Hm. Random calculation: 120 bushels of corn at 56 lbs per bushel, per acre, is about 11 metric tons per hectare[1]. According to the FDA[2], the US average projected production for 2014/2015 is 10.7 metric tons (the world average is about half that)…

>One wonders how the corporations farm them. The situation you describe doesn't sound like it would be any more economically feasible for them to work than your neighbor.

They don't have to pay for a house per 40 acres.

Re: We Can’t Let John Deere Destroy the Idea of Ownership

#280

Post by bucky »

redblacktree wrote: post #214
Kluny wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe tractor hacking will become a thing, too. I know lots of guys who circumvent the computers in their cars with pirated software, to make them racier. Might be a career in it for some of them.

I've recently become interested in this, since I bought a 2015 vehicle with a computer in the console. Do you have any advice/resources for a budding car hacker?

I'd search for forums for your make and model of car. Those are usually good starting places for getting information.
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