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Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware (vice.com)
Tractor owners across the country are reportedly hacking their John Deere tractors using firmware that's cracked in Easter Europe and traded on invite-only, paid online forums. The reason is because John Deere and other manufacturers have "made it impossible to perform 'unauthorized' repair on farm equipment," which has obviously upset many farmers who see it "as an attack on their sovereignty and quite possibly an existential threat to their livelihood if their tractor breaks at an inopportune time," reports Jason Koebler via Motherboard. As is the case with most modern-day engineering vehicles, the mechanical problems experienced with the newer farming tractors are often remedied via software. From the report: The nightmare scenario, and a fear I heard expressed over and over again in talking with farmers, is that John Deere could remotely shut down a tractor and there wouldn't be anything a farmer could do about it. A license agreement John Deere required farmers to sign in October forbids nearly all repair and modification to farming equipment, and prevents farmers from suing for "crop loss, lost profits, loss of goodwill, loss of use of equipment [...] arising from the performance or non-performance of any aspect of the software." The agreement applies to anyone who turns the key or otherwise uses a John Deere tractor with embedded software. It means that only John Deere dealerships and "authorized" repair shops can work on newer tractors. "If a farmer bought the tractor, he should be able to do whatever he wants with it," Kevin Kenney, a farmer and right-to-repair advocate in Nebraska, told me. "You want to replace a transmission and you take it to an independent mechanic -- he can put in the new transmission but the tractor can't drive out of the shop. Deere charges $230, plus $130 an hour for a technician to drive out and plug a connector into their USB port to authorize the part." "What you've got is technicians running around here with cracked Ukrainian John Deere software that they bought off the black market," he added.
And who is liable when the tractors malfunction and harm someone? This should be illegal unless someone can prove that the hacked firmware is safe.
As is the case with most tech products, they try to reduce you to a user, not an owner. Maybe the farmers were tired of the tractor stopping in the middle of the field, and starting projecting ads on the windscreen while downloading an upgrade.
The problem with a company like John Deere is they loose touch with their customers. John Deere obviously forgot that they service the farmer not the other way around. This too me would have a negative affect on new equipment purchases as well. Growing up in a farming community I know that many farmers do a lot of their own maintenance on equipment. Like any of us saving a little money and avoiding driving that big tractor to a dealer seems like a no brainer. Sadly this kind of behavior is happening to cars and trucks too, where the manufacture wants to lock the DIY out of fixing their cars.
Maybe, but how much of this situation is the owners breaking their equipment and then asking the manufacturer to fix it for free?
The first and most sensible solution would be to buy a Valtra, or any other competing product that doesn't have such stupid restrictions. There are options out there.
The second solution is to change forceful vendor lock-ins by affecting legislation. In my mind this type of lock-in is very anti-competitive and should be forbidden by law.
I've always wanted to visit Easter Europe, but can't find it on a map...
hacking their John Deere tractors using firmware that's cracked in Easter Europe
Let's hope there are no Easter Eggs in there.
Sig?
Time for competition to form the Open Tractor consortium. Components chosen for easy market access, easy repair and open source firmware. Tractor design for easy component access, with signature checks and protected registering for sabotage prevention. "I didn't change the autonomous driving and insecticide spreading components. Why does it tell me so? Aha, hackers employed by the envious cousin, next farm!"
If this were rented equipment, I would understand the company's stance. But if someone outright buys an item, it's theirs. Stop legally binding people to stupid shit when they decide to fork out their hard-earned money for your products. Just because Microsoft does it, doesn't mean it has to be the norm. Christ.
I tend to rant.
What happens when a tractor is possessed by the spirit of Nikita Kruschev?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqZGBawsg8k (2 minutes long)
Software as a Shackle. Nuff said.
We are quickly drifting from a (mind you, pretty localized) societal construct where democracy (you get to take part in the decisions) and state of law (laws are written down, everyone has (in theory) equal chances, everyone has recourses) back to something which resembles more a feudal system of yore. Free speech? Ah, but Pissbook is a privately owned company, so... Right to tinker? Ah, but you signed the contract, so...
'Twas nice while it lasted.
These tractors from the Indian company are pretty good, all old school, old tech. No fancy nancy software controlled stuff. Simple rugged diesel engine and clearly understandable mechanical parts. Apparently it is competing well in South Africa with other global giant farm equipment companies, due to "fix it and run it in the bush several hundred miles from the nearest repair shop" ability. Sub compact models are available in USA too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The more this shit spreads out from the software world, the sooner it ends.
For a farmer a tractor is a very big investment and much of their success as a farmer is riding on it (sorry for the pun).
So I don't think a sane farmer will want to do anything to it that would ruin it.
Sure you allways will find some counter examples, like some people that first by a Mercedes S class and then run into all kind of issues with it because they are too cheap to have it properly maintained.
BTW one could make the same reasoning for normal cars: "Gee I'm fed up with all those cars comming in for repairs under waranty. From now on if you as much as change the oil yourself: that's it. Your on your own".
That should have been "You're on your own". Sorry for my abuse of the english language.
As an engineer in a big multi-national I also see similar things going on in our company.
They try to prevent untrained/unauthorized technicians from doing what we call "low-level" maintenance even though our equipment might be of vital importance of that buyer.
In our company this is not necessary bad intent towards the customer, but more a way of protection our own business because selling only gives you 1 paycheck, service gives you hundreds in the course of years.
Our machines are pretty comparable in complexity to modern tractors I believe as years of research and development have made it so they are of higher quality for the customer. This does not immediately relate to longer life times of our products but does improve on requirements because of new industry, government & environmental standards.
But it also makes it harder to do a correct maintenance if you don't know the complete working of the machines.
Anyways, I don't want to justify John Deer's way of working, or any other car manufacturer ( because that seems to be the case here in Europe), but I do understand their position better.
The customer should be informed when they buy a product that their new product can only be maintained by the approved technicians, there for the EULA probably that has been forced onto the farmers.
I also don't know how the market competition is for farming vehicles in USA, Europe or the rest of the world.
And I think that part should be fixed then, if there is no (reasonable) competition/alternative for the farmers then there is a problem there.
Sure, that advise is pointless when one owns a newer John Deere tractor, but anyone who needs a new tractor should shop for a different brand. Nothing makes a company reverse course faster than a massive drop in sales. Ukrainian firmware has to do in the meantime.
simple. did someone force farmers to buy JD tractors? if not then it is nothing else as stealing. next time buy other tractor without those stupid terms
>what you've got is technicians running around here with cracked Ukrainian John Deere software that they bought off the black market
Now that's what I call Cyberpunk!
Regarding the right for owners to have a choice in how their machines are serviced...
In Europe there is legislation coming into effect in July 2021 which will requires OEMs to provide information to 3rd parts service tool manufacturers and Independent Operators such that they can achieve the same level of diagnostic capability as the OEM with their own tools.
See links like:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal...
http://www.cema-agri.org/publi...
In the U.S. there is no equivalent legislation in the U.S., but I would not be surprised if we see something similar in a few years. There are groups lobbying to this end, such as;
http://repair.org/association/
Disclaimer: I work for one of the 'other' Ag manufacturers on the topic of making the machines comply with this legislation
Yea, Fuck that.
Scrap copyright on bytecode/object code. There is nothing "expressive" about firmware or compiled code. There's no license and an attempt to do so under copyright would be an abuse of copyrights and barratry, quite serious a crime.
Open source would be required for ANY copyrights to be applied "as a joint work" to software. And copyrights could only grant rights that pierce copyright restrictions, NOT add any new restrictions.
Even without the last bit, open source for the firmware here would allow others to see what is going on and what could happen, and plan for it. If it contained a remote cutoff, then farmers could insist that this is not a sale, since they cannot be the owner if the company still controls the use of it. That would then mean if the machine broke down, that's John Deere's problem, it's their problem to to supply a replacement. After all, it's not the farmers' tractor that broke.
So... just buy something not John Deere... I mean, the logo on the equipment won't match your cap (which is free advertising for the company you seem to not like) but hey...
Stop buying limited rental products!
Farmers should organize an event to burn old non repairable John Deer equipment and advertise their purchase of non John Deer equipment. And further sell t-shirts about how John Deer is no friend to the American farmer. Do this at the Forth of July celebrations. And have town hall meetings with speakers telling their Horror Stories about John Deer. Find another manufacturer and help promote them over John Deer. Some of them might even give you a deal on a trade in if you publicly destroy your John Deer. Do not stop until everyone currently on the board of directors and otherwise that are running the company are completely replaced.
In the meantime get the right to repair laws on the books.
And yet they continue to buy John Deere products, perpetuating the cycle.
OK, I am in complete agreement that John Deere is doing something that if not illegal is at least reprehensible. But installing cracked Ukrainian firmware? Are they idiots? I can just imagine some Ukrainian hacker going, "now is time to shut harvest of evil USA down" and pressing a button and all of these tractors stop.
Just because we have a President that actually cares about America and its people, doesn't excuse lame-a** stupid business practices that drive business away...
Sure you allways will find some counter examples, like some people that first by a Mercedes S class and then run into all kind of issues with it because they are too cheap to have it properly maintained.
They run into all kinds of issues because, like all luxury cars, it's designed to last about five years tops and then fall the fuck apart so that you buy another one. The last one designed to last was the W126, but even it doesn't because they also pioneered biodegradable wiring harnesses at the same time. The window wiring fails where it flexes, and lots of other problems which are basically the same exist. The W140 is legendary for wiring problems. And every Mercedes since then is built just like every other car.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
http://www.mtzequipment.com/
At least it can be harmlessly disassembled and assembled
Libertarians believe very strongly in property rights and that one of government's most important functions is to preserve property rights:
https://www.lp.org/platform/
The only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected..
I don't know of any Libertarian that would consider a tractor, whole or in part, that would belong to John Deere after a farmer has voluntarily paid for it.
Are there alternatives to John Deere? Is there some lock-in with attachments, trailers, etc. (As a non-farmer I don't know)? I would have thought that the ability to repair would be a key selling point for competitors. If farmers stopped buying John Deere I expect they would review this policy
Hmm. It's off topic but here goes.
Is it in Mercedes best interest to have a bad reputation? I think not.
Just for kicks I did a small search on a mercedes S class of 10 years old. The minimum price (here in Belgium) is around €15.000 (but there were also some from around €30.000).
I recently sold the Nissan Almera of my father which was also around that age and which worked perfectly - €500 was all I could get. thats at 30 times less (in the best case).
A new Nissan of the same class of the Almera (Pulsar or Juke) is around €15.000 and a new S Class is around €85 000 which is 'only' about a factor 6. Even if you pimp up your Merc to the double of the price (which you could easily do) the Merc is still keeping its value much better (relative speaking).
CTs have been barking about this since Victorian days. Once an elite cabal controls the water, the food, the shelter, and the means of production, you can enslave the world without a single fetter (for those that skipped college fetters are basically shackles and chains). Those in power will always conspire (actively or passively) to consolidate power. If you can control the means of production (e.g. the tools farmers use to farm) you gain control of the food without having to seize their land. The state now owns the rain from the sky. It's almost complete, and you all applauded it the entire way. The private family farm was actively persecuted and now is nearly extinct. The AAA laws ensured independent farmers could never succeed and gave the government absolute power over the farmer. You are in dark times more then you realize.
John Deere: The stores!
And have no idea that they are voting for people who are forcing them to be criminals.
Two reasons people buy John Deere Reliability and name brand. When you buy a piece of equipment that costs the same as a small house you look at known companies with high levels of reliability. The software and repair lock-in is to make certain the repairs are using "superior" John Deere parts.
This is a backwards way of thinking about it when the farmer just needs to get things done on a shoe string budget. The Ukrainian cracked software is unfortunately needed. John Deere is forcing customers away due poor corporate decisions such as this. So far they have not retaliated. And if they do farmers will sell the equipment to buy the cheaper competition. They already know sooner or later that cheap competitor reliability will become less of a concern.
There's a lesson to be learned here. How many farmers who could care less about computers and technology showed up to vote for politicians offered hard stances of piracy?
How many farmers mocked the city boys and their computers who sat behind desks and didn't "roll up their sleeves" and get dirty?
Funny how those very farmers are now looking at a huge battle that they can't possibly win without *OUR* help.
I'm half tempted to scrape the Tractor forums and search for the hypocrites and out them. Magically those "criminals" are suddenly not such bad people after all are they? I personally can't wait until something like this impacts a religious organization.....
One, that a need develops, and is filled by the black market, as there is no authorized distribution at a competitive price point.
Two, that a company with the means and resources to do so, will pursue whatever tactics are necessary to ensure their success.
Beautiful.
Usually, these guys are modding the firmware to increase horsepower. Sure, I suppose in a few cases it comes down to mechanical breakdown situations, but mostly these guys are trying to squeeze out a few more horses. Last fall, my brother's JD combine started spitting up pieces of main bearings, blew the turbo. Then the rest of the engine went. $25,000.00 for a new engine and a week of down time. Turns out he had chipped the engine and the mechanic said that he had replaced 5 engines in the past weeks for similar failures - all of them chipped. I asked my brother "Why on earth would you chip such an expensive piece of equipment?" He replied that he wanted the extra 10 horses.
Having said that, there is no way that JD should be able to control the owner of the equipment in the fashion that they do. If the farmers want to mod, they should be able to. Whether it's a good idea or not. It should be the owner's decision.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Seriously. Does it track how far the tractor has gone - FitTractor? This sounds like another example of software trying to solve a problem nobody has asked to be solved. It's a tractor. Put gas in it and get to work.
Is it in Mercedes best interest to have a bad reputation? I think not.
It doesn't give them a bad reputation because all luxury autos are like this. That's why they all depreciate like they're in free-fall as soon as the warranty expires.
Even if you pimp up your Merc to the double of the price (which you could easily do) the Merc is still keeping its value much better (relative speaking).
Guess what? A 2007 S550 is the worst piece of shit you will ever see. You may leave your apology in your reply.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"The back 40 finds its own uses for things"
-- William Gibson (sorta)
So most of the people who are affected by this are farmers, which are generally rural people, who generally are right-wing/libertarian/tea party/republican etc? The same people who want the government out of everything and think the free market is the best solution? Deal with it. When you vilify people for wanting sensible regulation and laws that actually keep the market competitive, this is the crap you get. I have absolutely no pity, same for so many family farms being bought up by corporations. These problems are their own making. Bow down to your corporate lords peasants or just sell the family farm and go work in a cube.
Perhaps they are hoping that in their dotage they will marry a big-breasted Ukranian woman? http://marinalewycka.com/tract...
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I'm waiting for the headlines: "Russians hacking US food supply after Trump Takes Office."
Best thing you could do is sell it, then buy a different brand.
Most tools used in farming can be attached to any tractor. if you have something that requires a J.D. tractor, well, you bought into their ecosystem, your problem.
For that matter, they haven't been doing this kind of shit for all that long. Buy an older one and refurbish it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Farmers are smart and farmers are stupid and farmers are trapped. There are a LOT of issues before farmers but this is hardly a significant one.
I farm a bit and don't have JD tractors but I don't find much fault with this policy. Farming is a strategic security issue for the nation. It is getting more and more technical all the time. Farmers are the surfs of the Agro industry and sign and abide by horrible agreements from their banks and seed companies. This JD issue is a minor concern made SO much worse by using SW from an area of the world heavily invested in subverting the strength of the nation through cyber means. What is really in this bootleg SW. Is it possible that a bit of code is put in place to allow a ransom situation or much worse happen in the future. It is obvious that SW is being weaponized in this area of the world. Don't be stupid.
If you buy JD then stick with them when it comes to SW or any valid manufacturer. To corrupt the code in an expensive tractor is a VERY stupid idea. I don't blame JD a bit for taking a hard line on this. This is not about buying a set of 3rd party brake pads, it is about loading a VERY risky piece of SW onto your tractor that is likely to put at risk your bank loan on the tractor and put at risk the value of the equipment and the reliability of the equipment going forward.
Any real farmer has backup equipment just like any credible business. This is a false issue.
Here's the link to their EULA.
It appears to control the software that runs on their products.
If you don't use their s/w is there anything in there that limits what you can do?
https://www.deere.com/privacy_and_data/docs/agreement_pdfs/english/2016-10-28-Embedded-Software-EULA.pdf
https://www.deere.com/privacy_and_data/agreements/agreements.page
I think their offer in the EULA includes no guarantee that the s/w will work after a year.
A tractor should last for generations.
So what would it take to make replacement software for for their stuff?
Maybe a law that requires them to publish the interfaces to their s/w.
Maybe an out of your control outside group doing reverse engineering.
Given the crazy terms of their offer, it seems reasonable for a customer to have another option.
An open source project would be ideal.
Would it be possible to wipe all the s/w from their tractor and then figure out how to make it run without it.
Hopefully without looking into how their s/w works.
These contract terms appear to be unconscionable (legal term-where a contract only benefits one party at the expense of another), and as such should be thrown out.
If I were a shareholder of John Deere, I would be pitching the world's largest shit fit right now. They are absolutely destroying their reputation and exposing themselves to class action lawsuits when the idiotic "you can't sue us nah nah nah nah boo boo" terms get thrown out. If I were a farmer, I would dispose of "my" John Deere tractor as soon as possible, even if it meant settling for a lower quality foreign made tractor. Simply unacceptable.
Wouldn't be too surprised to see someone go full "Killdozer: Redux" on them if they ruined their business with this crap.
When it is a crime to harvest your own seed, you have bigger problems than software licensing on your space shuttle.. I mean farm tractor.
Even if I *don't* buy my seed from Monsanto, there is no way I can prevent the GMO-ridden farm upwind from me from contaminating my crop with Monsanto's patented genetics. That means I cannot harvest my seed for the next year. If I do, I will be sued, and the court will send an agricultural geneticist to test my crops, and they will find DNA polluted from the Monsanto farm, and I'll be on the hook for millions in penalties for something I have zero control over.
There is no element of intent to patent infringement.
John Deere is trying to extend this license to their Riding Mowers.
If you buy anything from Deere, you are in for big problems.
Would you really trust this company??
That's Jalopnik, a site that has decided that every single part of any German car will fail every five minutes and will cost $1 million to replace and they frame most of their articles to fit that narrative, despite the fact that their conclusions are mostly based on a small number of American-market models with a very shady service history and lots of aftermarket parts, bought by the umpteenth owner at a price that seems to good to be true and that, in the real world, German cars tend to be the most reliable (see e.g. ADAC's breakdown statistics).
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading Jalopnik, but you have to take some things with a lot of salt. It's directed at an American audience and they have a lot of strange prejudices and many in-crowd jokes.
Imagine if a foreign power could hack all the Deere equipment right at harvest time. However, that would be as unlikely as hacking a national election.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
You got the wrong country. It shall be legal, until someone can prove it is unsafe. And not just unsafe, but substantially unsafer than the original.
And even then free citizens of a free country should be free to endanger themselves however they wish — be it with alcohol, firearms, drugs, or "unapproved" farm equipment.
All that said, I suspect, John Deere are privately happy with the situation — they get to sell more tractors this way. Thanks to this "Ukrainian firmware", you can buy them with or without the warranty — a choice, no doubt, made illegal (or very costly) by earlier regulatory and/or legal rulings. Such as this one.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I wonder how can John Deere remotely lock a tractor.
I see only two options:
1. They install a mobile modem (with sim) into every tractor or
2. They require the tractor to go online (via WiFi) every day or so.
In any case I see easy ways to circumvent option no.2. But with option no.1 they'd be assuming universal mobile coverage across all USA, which seems not to be the case...
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
This is what happens when our government representatives are allowed to be bribed. And let's be clear, farming is a VITAL industry. When a company assumes not only a monopoly on the product but on services to maintain/repair that product it's not a sale, it's a lease with an expensive initial processing charge. The dangers to the food supply as well as business are obvious and monopolies will almost invariably be abused although this is an extreme case, it's why we are supposed to have antitrust laws. We have something somewhat similar happening with chicken farming as well with retaliation of the enslaved farmers complain. If our government doesn't stop working for the corporations and start doing it's actual job, working for the PEOPLE they represent, we will all pay in reduced food production leading to higher prices and possibly more food imports. Even when we have laws the yare not being enforced here. Reason? Lobbying. Farming is not a nice profession to be in unless you are a corporation like Deere or Perdue Farms.We should be very concerned here.
The FSF should open farming offices in California, Iowa and Texas. (Top 3 agricultural producing States)
Never thought Merritt and Wyatt would push the FSF envelope.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
That's Jalopnik, a site that has decided that every single part of any German car will fail every five minutes and will cost $1 million to replace
They are essentially correct. Check out for example the typical longevity of and replacement cost for the vaunted S-Class air suspension. The parts are still too new to chance getting from third parties, so you have to go to the dealer. If you don't have a very good relationship with them, you're into thousands per corner.
despite the fact that their conclusions are mostly based on a small number of American-market models with a very shady service history and lots of aftermarket parts
You should be able to buy aftermarket parts. If the design requires insanely fancy-pants parts, it's not a good one. For example, the chain tensioners in the 40V 4.2 liter Audi V8. The 32V engine doesn't have VVT, so it doesn't have them, and it's considerably more durable as a result. Both have the same stupid Flennor/Gates timing belt with a 60k lifespan. California mandates that timing belts have a 90k lifespan, Audi said "sure whatever" and rated it for 90k. It's the same belt. Chains or gears forever. But that's apparently too noisy for luxury. I'd be better off with a LS motor, which has none of these considerations and yet is just as efficient.
in the real world, German cars tend to be the most reliable
They tend to be the most expensive. That is, they require a lot of dollars invested to make them reliable. I've got a full service history on a 1997 A8 Quattro to show how and why that is the case. In spite of that I've been going through an epic to transfer its transmission into a 1998 that I got as a parts car. It's got half the miles on it, and it's in nicer condition in general inside and out. If I weren't capable of doing this stuff myself, it would make more sense to just buy something else, because it would cost too much to have it done even by an independent mechanic to justify given the low, low value of the vehicle. And its value is in turn low not just because of its age, but because of the expense in servicing it.
The average person would love to be driving something like this around now that it's been handed down from someone who could afford to absorb the expense of its initial depreciation, but they can't afford the maintenance to keep it from disintegrating. It's two hundred bucks in crankcase vent breather hoses I worked around with silicone hose and a right angle fitting, and thirty bucks for a little y-shaped vacuum hose I went ahead and bought, and the headrests don't go up and down because the drive flex cable jacket stretched over time due to heat cycling and has to be shortened and the rear sun shade has come unglued and is catching on the rear parcel shelf and the arm rests tend to crack and Audi would like a thousand dollars for one but you can often pick up a pair of them from the facelift model for a couple hundred and the list goes ever on and on.
I've been talking about Audi for a long while, but I also own a 1982 Mercedes-Benz 300SD (W126) and guess what? Mercedes is doing its level best to kill off the platform. You can get basically all the parts for cars which are older than the W126 from the Mercedes Classics parts program, but there are a number of parts for the W126 which you can no longer get new from anyone for any price. The primary example which is going to kill off these cars is the locks. Mercedes does not sell ignition locks at all any more, and an otherwise fully matched lock set will set you back painfully. No one is re-keying these locks or making fresh keys, either, but that doesn't really matter because while it had at the time the strongest column lock ever devised for a production auto, the lock itself is beyond flimsy. It also only took me about an hour and a half to figure out how to remove a completely failed and jammed lock and column locking mechanism from my car and then do it start to finis
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Current BMW models require the battery to be registered with the car before it will work. You can't just go down to your local auto parts store and get a new battery and swap out the old one in your garage. This holds true even if you get your battery from the BMW dealer.
I'm waiting for the day when BMW requires only bmw approved/certified sockets to be used.
what about renting = the landlord pays for service and upkeep?
Will they be so willing to say you are just renting the software?
When a major vendor fucks up and pisses off their customers, that's a chance for smarter competitors to eat their lunch. There must be at least a dozen companies, from Toyota to Caterpillar, who could step in here and serve this market.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Actually very few farmers own their own tractors any. At least the high end models. There almost all leased. They are simply to expensive to purchase outright.
I have recently been doing research on a small sub compact tractor and Deere quickly was dropped from my list of candidates for this reason and for the DPF Diesel Particulate Filter issues. Deere is also very proprietary with everything they do that logo will hold you hostage.
I am seriously looking at Mahindra, simpler more tried and true older school design. But Mahindra still has some of the electronics issues. But NO DPF on the Mahindra and it is the only tractor in the U.S. that does not have a DPF or require diesel juice etc for the Mahindra MCRD engine to make tier IV compliance.
Most of the smaller Deeres are repackaged Yanmar tractors anyway.
I have a friend in southern Illinois who's family has been farming for generations his father is in his late 80's and still going strong. They refuse to buy anything with a Deere logo on it. They buy all their equipment at auction and rebuild it over the winter months if they cant strip it rebuild it and use what ever parts they want hey wont buy it. Some of the equipment they are using is ancient and still going strong. Cast iron lasts just maintain it, oil it and it will go on and on almost for ever. Deere along with apple and some others have spent millions to fight right to repair legislation.
have to put up with some why should farmers be a special case , it should be all or none.
I'd imagine no-one would want to buy a used tractor with these restrictions - hell, reselling one may well be against the licensing agreement.
A search engine indicates that New Holland seem to have a similar market share to John Deere, and that there are several other smaller manufacturers. Why would anyone buy John Deere under these circumstances?
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
The high end tractors they are really talking about are only available from 2 manufacturers. Modern Farmers are going to pull a chisel point plow, Disk Rippers, Clump busters and a cultipacker 60 feet wide in one pass over 5,000 acres, with a tractor that has 500 drawbar HP; next day pull a planter 120 feet wide.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
that won't allow you to fix their tractors.
As in don Camillo movie By the way Russian tractors made nowadays are nice: website.
I'm not doubting your personal experiences with older, expensive niche models, with huge, high-strung engines in a country with relatively few dealerships and reduced parts availability, but it does not really extrapolate to Mercedes or Audi in general, both of which sell about dozen of C and D segment cars with an ordinary ~2L turbodiesel engine for each V8 S-class or A8. Expensive cars have expensive parts and exotic engines may have complicated service procedures, regardless of the brand. Any additional luxury features may fail at some point. The more ordinary Mercedes and Audi models are not especially expensive to maintain and they have a well-deserved reputation for high durability and reliability.
Enforcement of legal contracts is one of the few "legitimate" areas for the Government to be involved in, according to most Libertarian types I have spoken with. The proper role for the Government and courts is to act as the armed enforcement agents for the corporations.
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In 2012, 75% of the 2 million farms in the US produced a paltry three percent of total revenue. In fact, their average annual income was less than $40k per farm, and most of that was from "non-farm" income, like subsidies, retirement income, etc. The dismal data is here.
John Deere couldn't care less about those farmers -- the money obviously lies elsewhere. And exactly where is that? In the three percent of farms (classed "large" or "very large" by the US Dept of Agriculture) that accounted for a whopping 52 percent of all production and 66.4% of agricultural revenue in the US.
So -- John Deere isn't going to worry about a bunch of hayseeds hacking their tractors -- they are not a significant revenue source now, and based on concentration trends in the US agriculture market, they are going to disappear entirely.
Marx was right about one thing -- owning the means of production (he called it "tools"; we call it hardware, now) is the key to capitalist success, and in a largely mechanized and automated industry like agriculture, that means owning the software, and through it, the hardware. John Deere has apparently grokked it rightly, as well.
It's bad when you have to jailbreak your tractor. Then again, John Deere is just the Eacalade version of a Yukon in the tractor world; they're both the same under the hood. People often use collective pride to mask mass stupidity. "Proudly Made in the USA" I guess applies here. If this keeps up, Japan and Germany will just start making better products like they did in the 70s and 80s. Your parents called it junk, but it really wasn't.
I see Gizmodo and Kotaku on top so they are related to them?
We have seen them write a lot of bullshit articles lately, they are not exactly reliable news sources.
The more ordinary Mercedes and Audi models are not especially expensive to maintain and they have a well-deserved reputation for high durability and reliability.
Yes, but they're just cars. If you take all the fancy kit out, all cars are at least decent. At least, anything you can buy in the USA. We're talking about depreciation of luxury cars, and their reliability or lack thereof.
There is something that makes ordinary Mercedes and Audi models expensive to maintain, though; the dealer's attitude towards parts prices. There are only a couple of Audi dealers in the entire country that do not rape you on parts orders, for example. For new vehicles, for which the replacement parts are not available through the aftermarket, this is a significant concern.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
For a farmer a tractor is a very big investment and much of their success as a farmer is riding on it (sorry for the pun).
So I don't think a sane farmer will want to do anything to it that would ruin it.
Sure you allways will find some counter examples, like some people that first by a Mercedes S class and then run into all kind of issues with it because they are too cheap to have it properly maintained.
BTW one could make the same reasoning for normal cars: "Gee I'm fed up with all those cars comming in for repairs under waranty. From now on if you as much as change the oil yourself: that's it. Your on your own".
Farmers are used to being somewhat self-reliant in the physical sense. Farmers are used to doing a fair amount of physical work. The very notion of of being required to play this kind of money for something intangible offends the senses, especially when the machine itself already cost a half a million dollars to purchase.
I agree with the farmers. It is stupid to require software activation to use hardware that one owns, especially when the software activation is required to use features that one has already paid for.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Al Franken for president in 2020 and Jill Stein as VP. The bumper stickers will say "Franken/Stein 2020"
Totally off-topic and I know you're not supposed to reply to peoples' signatures, but this is great. However, I can guarantee the Democratic Party won't do it; doing something catchy which would be popular with people, instead of picking the worst possible corporatist neo-liberal candidate they can find, is anathema to the Democrats. If they really did run a "Franken/Stein" ticket, they'd surely win, for many reasons, and the memorability of that phrase would be part of building enthusiasm. So there's just no way it'll happen because of this. My prediction: Hillary will be "given" the nomination yet again, with some other crappy right-wing religious VP pick, and she'll lose, yet again, and we'll have 4 more years of Trump.
Here in America, where the only German cars we get are high-end Mercedes, BMWs, Audis, and the only economical German cars are butt-ugly (and highly polluting) VWs made in Mexico, from everything I've read German cars are not all that reliable, and worse are specifically engineered to be impossible for you to work on them, and have atrociously expensive parts and service. One guy I knew had a BMW 2-3 years old that somehow developed suspension trouble and needed $1500 in repairs for it. An economical Japanese car is easy for you to do most maintenance and simple repairs in your garage and the parts are cheap.
Japanese cars are the ones you get if you want reliability and relatively inexpensive parts and service (best are the Japanese cars made in Japan). And don't whine about me comparing a $18-30k Honda or Toyota or Mazda or Subaru to a $40-90k BMW; those are the choices we get here.
"Sir, have you tried switching it off and on again?"
Well, you have to admit that is a pretty cool tractor
https://www.caseih.com/northamerica/en-us/products/tillage/disk-rippers
I'd research alternatives to John Deere. I think there are actually some, right? If there are, I'd go to the Deere dealers first. I'd take my time, chat up the sales guy, get all the way to what looks like a closed sale. Then just as I'm about to sign I'd back out and tell him why. Waste their sales guy's time, and tell all your buddies to do it too.
If all of the companies are pulling this shit, it might be time for another tractorcade like we had in the 70s. Block the Beltway and turn up the turf on the Mall like they did back then. Maybe that'll get their attention.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You just have to be in a room with both Liberals and Conservatives and take a stance they both hate :)
See, moderate :)
Someone with deep pockets (perhaps a union of farmers all working together?) should fund a lawsuit suing John Deere for violating the first sale doctrine. Carry it forward through all the appeals John Deere Lawyers will launch, until the John Deere company has been found guilty in all instances and exhausted all their appeals... as they will be, unless they buy a lot of Judges.
Part of the reputation for things going wrong in luxury cars is due to there simply being a lot more *to* go wrong, as well as features being implemented in such cars while they were still cutting edge tech (by the time a feature makes it down into lowend cars its been refined over years)...
Another thing worth considering is cost/availability of parts... Jaguar parts are easy to source in the UK and relatively cheap, but in other countries they can be difficult to find and expensive for instance.
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At work. The free market will eventually make it so that you will have no alternative but to do only do what a company allows you to do with their product. Sure another company can come around and try to make a better cheaper alternative, but they wont ever be able to compete against multimillion dollar conglomerates
They run into all kinds of issues because, like all luxury cars, it's designed to last about five years tops and then fall the fuck apart so that you buy another one.
I have a 2003 Mercedes, so it's more than 5 years old. It runs like a charm.
OH goodness no.
Sure they still sell a LOT of the Bud type beer, but there are TONS of independent, smaller and craft brewers around the US.
Examples:
Abita Beer
NOLA Brewery
Second Line Brewing
Lazy Magnolia
Shiner Beer
And here's a wiki media of the rest of the LA breweries here down south....
Linky
The Shiner one is in TX..but those listed are just a very FEW of the many in my immediate area...and each area on the US has their own good breweries. Some have product that is only available locally, but others are nationwide.
It's been a couple of decades since you had to drink crappy beer in the US.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Part of the reputation for things going wrong in luxury cars is due to there simply being a lot more *to* go wrong,
That's why I bought the 300SD, and it's also why I bought the A8. The 300SD is as dead-nuts simple as it is possible for an S-Class to be. It has none of the fancy stuff they put on the gasoline models, except a sunroof. It does use advanced materials — it's got Aluminum hood and trunk lids, and it made early use of composite bumper pieces. This was a design completed in 1978! But it has extremely advanced driving characteristics for its age, due to the combination of its multilink front suspension and semi-trailing arm rear that provides controlled toe in response to body roll. When the springs and bushings are in good condition, the whole car completely cooperates with the driver even when pushing it past its limits. Without going into a lot of detail, the A8 is as close as you can get in a more modern luxobarge that has a slushbox, and there's a six-speed manual transmission available for it unlike, for the Mercedes. The AWD is based on a mechanical center diff, for example.
Another thing worth considering is cost/availability of parts...
That's why the W126 300SD has to go, and the D2 A8 is incoming. You can actually get parts for the A8. In fact, my 1998 is a "parts car" that I got for $300 which, except for the failed transmission, is actually nicer than my 1997 for which I paid... more. I hope to recoup some of the costs there by selling some of the more valuable parts from the 1997. The nineties were truly a time at which Audi really only sold one car but in different sizes, and there is a lot of sharing between the A4, A6, A8, and even the VW Passat. (Wikipedia claims that the B3 Passat was a completely distinct design which does not share parts with Audi models. Nope.)
Jaguar parts are easy to source in the UK and relatively cheap, but in other countries they can be difficult to find and expensive for instance.
For large parts, that's a problem. For small ones, I can reasonably source parts from the UK or Germany. I've done both, though I'm not sure I've done both in the course of working on the Audi. I certainly have for the Mercedes.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Your crop is ready to harvest and your tractor won't start, not because there is any technical problem with the tractor but a software time bomb that you must then pay the dealer many hundreds of dollars to re-enable the software so you can use your tractor.
This is blackmail in my books.
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Not buying their tractors.
Many customers also benefit from cloud services because they can scale up. Examples: a startup working on medical technology should spend all of its effort on winning customers, and not on figure out how to set up a data center. A rapidly growing software business should just be able to buy more capacity and focus their recruiting efforts on developers, not IT staff, just like they lease a building. This is so that the organization focus can be on customer needs, not their own needs.
Dear engineer in a big multi-national,
Here's an idea, stop milking customers to the last drop. You want to make America great again? Back then companies made good product and sold them to appreciating customers and did not try underhanded stunts to pad their revenues.Period.
Squeezing every last drop of revenue is very short sighted and plain wrong.
The approved technician is bunk. You should now that right?
A disgruntled customer
Green Screen Of Death GSOD
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Is that right after Good Friday?
Just try and buy parts for an older German Car. Last year I brought my Father's 1969 Mercedes 280 SL "Pagoda" back to life. One brake shoe, $140. Rubber brake line, $80 each. Calipers $325 per wheel. Fuel Pump $450. Working on that car convinced me that Germans have really long arms and very small hands. A simple job - like replacing the fuel filter, or replacing the points - took hours. The fuel filter could not be done without two people, one under the car and one above.
Contrast that to my 1964 1/2 Mustang where a set of brake shoes is $34.99.... A fuel pump is $41.99... And this isn't just because people are crazy about old Mustangs, other old American cars have similar parts prices unless the are Packards, Auburns, etc.
Murphy was an optimist
300SD were eurotaxis. They were built for a market that puts a million miles on a vehicle, but doesn't get emotional about keeping it going past its economic life.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
New VWs (VW/Porsche/Audi) are _terrible_ cars. Even my German relatives have them on the 'never again' list, much as it pained them to get there.
The first step to replace a brake master cylinder on a new 'bug': Remove front bumper...no joke. Like the old joke about British cars. (To replace the headlight, first remove the back bumper, disassemble going forward until you reach the headlamp...)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Is that a Politically Correct way of saying "non-Muslim Europe"?
300SD were eurotaxis. They were built for a market that puts a million miles on a vehicle, but doesn't get emotional about keeping it going past its economic life.
300SDs were extremely popular in the USA. That's why there are still so many of them running around in spite of the fact that the body is expensive to maintain. It's only relatively recently that most parts became relatively affordable, via eBay. You used to have to just pay exorbitant prices at dealers. But those parts you can't get are a serious problem. The "Febi-Bilstein" ignition lock I had to buy for my 300SD feels like garbage. I have a distinct feeling it is actually neither Febi nor Bilstein, but it's what is available.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I believe, something like that has already been done by Marcin Jakubowski and the Civilization starter kit, see the Ted presentation.