Did John Deere Just Swindle California's Farmers Out of Their Right to Repair? (wired.com) 175
An anonymous reader quotes a new Wired opinion piece by Kyle Wiens and Elizabeth Chamberlain from iFixit:
A big California farmers' lobbying group just blithely signed away farmers' right to access or modify the source code of any farm equipment software. As an organization representing 2.5 million California agriculture jobs, the California Farm Bureau gave up the right to purchase repair parts without going through a dealer. Farmers can't change engine settings, can't retrofit old equipment with new features, and can't modify their tractors to meet new environmental standards on their own. Worse, the lobbyists are calling it a victory.... John Deere and friends had already made every single "concession" earlier this year...
Just after the California bill was introduced, the farm equipment manufacturers started circulating a flyer titled "Manufacturers and Dealers Support Commonsense Repair Solutions." In that document, they promised to provide manuals, guides, and other information by model year 2021. But the flyer insisted upon a distinction between a right to repair a vehicle and a right to modify software, a distinction that gets murky when software controls all of a tractor's operations. As Jason Koebler of Motherboard reported, that flyer is strikingly similar -- in some cases, identical word-for-word -- to the agreement the Farm Bureau just brokered...
Instead of presenting a unified right-to-repair front, this milquetoast agreement muddies the conversation. More worryingly, it could cement a cultural precedent for electronics manufacturers who want to block third-party repair technicians from accessing a device's software.
Just after the California bill was introduced, the farm equipment manufacturers started circulating a flyer titled "Manufacturers and Dealers Support Commonsense Repair Solutions." In that document, they promised to provide manuals, guides, and other information by model year 2021. But the flyer insisted upon a distinction between a right to repair a vehicle and a right to modify software, a distinction that gets murky when software controls all of a tractor's operations. As Jason Koebler of Motherboard reported, that flyer is strikingly similar -- in some cases, identical word-for-word -- to the agreement the Farm Bureau just brokered...
Instead of presenting a unified right-to-repair front, this milquetoast agreement muddies the conversation. More worryingly, it could cement a cultural precedent for electronics manufacturers who want to block third-party repair technicians from accessing a device's software.
The capitalist solution? (Score:1)
Can't they just not buy Deer anymore and start buying Case or International?
Re: The capitalist solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
They are plus a ukraining company that I can't remember.
However tractors tend to be long term investment s(20-40 years) and change is slow. This law was focusing on people who bought tractors 10- 15 years ago and need updates and repair work.
John Deere is long term destroying their brand. So sad.
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Is that so, Ivan?
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Da!
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You're thinking of Belarus, which is a big seller in the Central Valley.
Re:The capitalist solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like buying something like oil. It's capital investment and it affect the stuff you've already bought.
This is Deere turning an occasional choice about which farmers do have choice into regular payments for which they won't have choice.
This all reminds me of something Gandhi once said. A reporter asked him what he thought of Western Civilization, and he replied that he thought it would be a good idea. Capitalism only works because of competition, but companies do everything they can to avoid actually competing, for example making it hard to compare their products to other vendors (boy to vendors hate being in "commodity" businesses), or in this case by trying to make it difficult for customers to choose competitors for some transactions.
And if it's legal to evade competiing, why not? The fact that this undermines the justification for capitalism isn't your problem. This is a situation where you need regulation to ensure a free market can operate the way its' suppose to.
Re:The capitalist solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism only works because of competition, but companies do everything they can to avoid actually competing ...
Good observation. I like to say that there is absolutely one thing that you can always count on a corporate entity to do: protect an established revenue stream.
A corporation does not have morals or loyalty even though many of them do their best to create the illusion. They will lie about science, bribe governments, destroy competitors if they can get away with it and often, if they have the short-term mindset and think they can get away with it, wring out their customer base like a dirty washrag. That last seems to be what is happening here.
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If governments did not have the power to dole out favors (crony... capitalism), competition would be possible.
The problem is always the government.
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How about a company that just makes replacement open standard computer modules.
That way the farmers just remove the closed John Deer one and replace it with an other module?
Has everyone gotten afraid of the soldering iron?
Back in the 8 bit days people would just stack chips, cut connections and bypass circuits to get there computer to work the way they wanted.
Re:The capitalist solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, that's stupid. The barriers-to-entry are too high in a market this mature. But then, you knew that.
There is *nothing* un-capitalist about government regulation, so long as it is the right kind of regulation. Legislation that mandates that these software solutions be open and available for third-party modification is exactly the right kind of regulation that help keeps a market competitive.
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Starting a tractor company is one thing. What about a tractor controller company, though?
As long as you own the tractor, not lease it (which opens up many cans of worms with regard to reverse engineering and modifying or even running software or firmware), you should be able to write your own software to control the tractor and attached devices.
DMCA and copyright in general protects the copyrighted code, not the actual processes carried out by the code, and reverse engineering to find the information requi
Re: The capitalist solution? (Score:2, Insightful)
That remains to be seen. Musk has been more successful than, say, Fisker, but itâ(TM)s still more likely to join the ranks of Delorean, Packard, Duesenberg, and Steudebaker than it is to become another Mercedes, Ford, or Toyota.
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Tesla has its production numbers going in the right direction, but it's not yet clear that they can sustain that level of production, nor that they can survive with the amount of debt the are carrying.
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False premise.
You're comparing a long-established traditional car manufacturer's sales numbers against another company that's still building out their manufacturing line. There was a time that FB had only a fraction of the traffic that myspace did too.
While we're using BS numbers, can we compare the sales growth rate of Tesla over the last 12 months with...basically any car manufacturer? Nonsense statistics are nonsense.
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But, He Chooses Not To (Score:2, Insightful)
Musk could well do so. But, so far he has fought on the opposite side. So, it seems that Musk is strenuously opposed to the right to repair concept and open software is just laughable.
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This could actually work, at least for a smaller player to drive growth in market. A smaller player can't maintain the dealer network to pull this off, because it depends on sufficient dealers and service centers to credibly supply the necessary "support" required. And support is required.
But a smaller player simply can't do that. Instead you provide easily accessible diagnostic information, and 1-2 service warehouses able to ship parts overnight with sufficient information for the farmer themselves, indepe
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But this whole debate is literally to NOT require dealer service.
Saying it's not viable for another player to enter the market because they don't have the service centers that the farmers don't want to use in the first place makes no sense.
You realize that farmers tend to be pretty handy folks and there are PLENTY of mechanics which can work in diesel and hydraulics. What they can't do is get into the computer that controls everything.
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There is simply no point in letting people own their own family farms..
Citizen komrade. The Politburo approves your thinking but we have suspicions regarding your levels of activism. You will therefore be taken to the State educational and rehabilitation facility in Kbuxluiztik until such time The People determine you are not a threat.
The following is probably wasted on you but here it is anyway:
Yes there is absolutely a good reason for family farms. They produce vastly better product. Go to any Farmers market in any of thousands of cities that take place weekly sur
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Re: The capitalist solution? (Score:2)
I also have little or no respect for large scale waste over â€oeit tastes betterâ€. Single unified mass-economy production, inventory
Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Believe me, if Case or any other competitors thought that farmers would actually be willing to pay higher prices for equipment without the restrictions on right to repair, they would have already jumped on it on long time ago. The reality is that making "open source" equipment means less guaranteed revenue after you sell that equipment, which means you have to sell it at a higher upfront cost. And the harsh reality is that farmers, for all their blustering, are unwilling to pay that upfront cost. If they were, you can bet that Case and many others would already be offering that easy-to-repair equipment and making a killing over Deere.
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And the harsh reality is that farmers, for all their blustering, are unwilling to pay that upfront cost. If they were, you can bet that Case and many others would already be offering that easy-to-repair equipment and making a killing over Deere.
So, you are saying that farmers don't really want or need the ability to repair their own equipment? Because that is what the evidence points to. If they really wanted to be able to repair their own equipment they would certainly have bought equipment that they could repair for themselves.
The reality is that making "open source" equipment means less guaranteed revenue after you sell that equipment, which means you have to sell it at a higher upfront cost.
There are plenty of counter-examples to this. IBM and HP immediately spring to mind.
Re: Solution (Score:3)
They may want and/or need, but are unwilling to pay for it.
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They're not offered the option to make the choice.
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So, you are saying that farmers don't really want or need the ability to repair their own equipment?
No, I'm saying they're too cheap to pay the upfront cost for it. If Case said "We'll offer you an easy-to-repair version of this tractor for a little more upfront cost" farmers would still opt for the cheaper locked-down version instead. And that's why Case and others don't bother. If there were money to be made in selling easy-to-repair tractors, someone would have jumped on it a long time ago and would be crushing Deere right now.
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Sounds like you've never driven a piece of farm equipment.
Already things are highly automated. They drive themselves and now many machines can turn themselves around at the end of the field. So that's 90% of the way there to being autonomous right? Well, not quite. Turns out it's a lot more involved than that. A human operator continuously monitors conditions, and alters course to avoid potential hazards. Quite often I've noticed a spot that I think is pretty muddy underneath, but think it might be firm
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It's funny you should mention IBM and HP in the context of this story. IBM spun off Lexmark, after all, and both Lexmark and HP are notorious for trying to use DRM to block third party refills and force customers to buy their extremely overpriced printer refill cartridges that cost more than the printer did.
It's a startlingly good parallel to what John Deere is doing, selling at a loss (or minimal profit... I don't have their internal numbers) to undercut competitors, then using DRM to force the buyers to
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You make a good point. However, they are also excellent examples of companies that responded to the demands of the marketplace. They both offer extensive product lines with Linux as a supported operating system, whether you buy from them or from a different vendor or handle it yourself. The point is that the government did not have to force them to make open source offerings (the marketplace took care of that), their choice to make open source offerings is not harming them, but if they chose to not make
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Actually few people care about or 'need' the right to repair their stuff. Most people, farmers included, have no idea how their "stuff" works, especially when it comes down to IT. It's better/faster/cheaper to just next-business-day on-site replacement by the manufacturer than hire a technician or engineer that may be able to come this week and then have to wait 3 weeks to order parts.
Farms etc. can't survive if they're "down" for a few days. Entire crops are timed and engineered with markets, weather and r
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Is that so? in a large multi-thousand-acre farm you can just wait for days to have someone come fix it for you?
Most farmers are incredibly technically competent people who do repair their own equipment.
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Is that so? in a large multi-thousand-acre farm you can just wait for days to have someone come fix it for you?
Most farmers are incredibly technically competent people who do repair their own equipment.
If the ability to repair broken equipment on the spot is so important, then why are no ag equipment companies catering to that segment of the market? Ag equipment manufacturing is a competitive industry and just in the US there are at least a half dozen very recognizable brands (meaning that there are probably more than that because someone in the industry would be more knowledgeable about them). To say nothing of equipment from foreign manufacturers.
The lack of a given product or feature in a highly comp
Re: Solution (Score:3)
I grew up the son of a farmer. Ever bailed hay? It's a fairly time sensitive process. Bail it too wet, and you run the chance of mold and mildew, if not having it rot, spontaneously combust, and burn your barn down. Too dry, and it degrades the quality of the hay. Point is, when the hay is ready, it's gotta be bailed.
Dad's tractor set up consisted of an International tractor, a JD square baker with a kicker, followed by the hay wagon. We came off a side hill with the wagon 3/4 full. Dad didn't head right do
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I don't think you quite understand.
Some of JD's LOW END agricultural tractors START at $150,000.00 with next to no options.
Some of their largest cost in excess of 3/4ths of a million dollars.
This is DEFINITELY *NOT* about being "cheap".
And these are MAJOR investments for a farm.
And downtime during their growing season, or having to ship the damn thing to a dealer to have it worked on is just not in the cards.
Being told you need to buy another half-million dollar tractor after a couple of years because of ch
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Nicely put..
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It's called a service contract, us techies know it as an SLA. This is not about "dad's tractor with a broken axle", those small farm tractors are just as repairable, even more than a regular car.
If you buy one or more multi-million dollar investments and don't have a service contract, you're bound to go bankrupt. Same if you're running a datacenter and have nobody to fix a computer. Now you could argue that these laws would allow for third party service contracts (for good or for bad), but the "poor farmer
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"
If the ability to repair broken equipment on the spot is so important, then why are no ag equipment companies catering to that segment of the market? Ag equipment manufacturing is a competitive industry and just in the US there are at least a half dozen very recognizable brands (meaning that there are probably more than that because someone in the industry would be more knowledgeable about them). To say nothing of equipment from foreign manufacturers.
"
It would appear you are posting about things you have n
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Farmer's certainly know who in their area can repair tractors other than the vendor. For everything other than the software, you can bet that a majority of farmers know how to repair it or have someone who can.
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I'd go farther than that. They could repair the software too if it wasn't illegal for them to do so.
But the problem goes farther than that. It prevents third party vendors from getting into the business. Which means that a farmer has to wait on a John Deere dealer, even if it will be days or weeks before they have a tech available.
It also means that they can't buy parts from a third party, even when the part doesn't originally come from John Deere, for example a starter or coolant valve which might be stand
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My family's farmers have a degree in agricultural engineering which is a combination of business, biochemistry, mechanical, electrical, hydro- and geoengineering and a number of other University-level courses.
They don't go out and fix an engine. You're thinking about the small family apple farm. They have two 1910 tractors that they keep running and even modern tractors are available from various sources without any special tech on board.
Re:Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
> Believe me, if Case or any other competitors thought that farmers would actually be willing to pay higher prices for equipment without the restrictions on right to repair, they would have already jumped on it on long time ago
If I may say, this is an incomplete analysis. If a company could steal property, sabotage competitors, and advertise fraudulently, by this competitive standard, they would. They don't partly because it becomes evident, partly because many employees would object, and partly because there are strong regulations against it. Raw profitability is rarely the full reasons not to do something in the business world.
In this case, it's consumer protection laws and working relationships with repair centers that encourage companies to make repair tools and tuning tools available. But the repair and maintenance costs are tremendous. And keeping the repair data proprietary or keeping it a trade secret has often been ruled or legislated as illegal, since the purchaser cannot apply their full ownership and privileges to control their own equipment without that data.
John Deere? (Score:5, Informative)
A big California farmers' lobbying group just blithely signed away farmers' right to access or modify the source code of any farm equipment software.
No swindle [merriam-webster.com] at all. Straight out agreement by the farmers' lobbying group.
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And this is not a law, it is merely a deal between Deere and this farmer's group.
Farmers who choose not to be members in that group, can mess with sw all they want - exercising their right to repair. Sure, they won't get any source, so sw may have to be reverse engineered or written from scratch. Complicated, so go for some other tractor manufacturer. Perhaps a smaller actor can be talked into providing sw to repair shops - as a way of competing with Deere. Could get them some very loyal customers . . .
Depends on how they got the lobbying group (Score:5, Insightful)
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I can't imagine why else a lobbying group for farmers would do the exact opposite of what their constituents want.
Do we know that? The original article has just one farmer who is concerned about buying parts - but nothing about software. Perhaps most of the constituents care only about availability of 3rd party mechanical parts, and don't give a rat's ass about the firmware inside.
Re:Depends on how they got the lobbying group (Score:5, Informative)
The firmware blocks third-party parts using DRM. Any talk about the hardware is inextricable from the talk about software.
Re: Depends on how they got the lobbying group (Score:5, Informative)
You can't change a spark plugs and without a software override code on these tractors.
Yes it is that bad.
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That is not how vehicles work (except to a certain extent Teslas).
Modern vehicles are a hodgepodge of random interconnected computers that each do one thing plus half of another. Replace the radio and the pedestrian collision detection will stop working. I can't imagine that tractors are built more sensibly.
Replacing the computerization is a huge task.
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You can't change a spark plugs and without a software override code on these tractors.
Yes it is that bad.
Criminy if the mods aren't gullible today! They've probably changed about as many spark plugs as you have. Well done, bro.
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When was the last time that replacing a part in your car was blocked by DRM? That's why you need to modify the firmware in these tractors. You keep playing dumb, but are ignoring the basic facts. This is not about tweaking, it's about repair.
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You must be a U.S. citizen. No one else in the world would think that 51% of a population should have the right to dominate the other 49% by virtue of a 2% majority.
The U.S. founding fathers were right in their fear of mob rule, based on the 2% majority.
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I think the more likely possibility is that they convinced the lobbying group that being able to modify the software was something that was not feasible while still retaining manufacturer warranty and perhaps things like emissions certifications (something which is specifically called out in the agreement).
I found the article difficult to read. For example, this part:
These restrictions are enormous. If car mechanics couldnâ(TM)t reprogram car computers, a good portion of modern repairs just wouldnâ(TM)t be possible. When you hire a mechanic to fix the air-conditioning in a Civic, they may have to reprogram the electronic control unit.
I seriously doubt that a mechanic is "reprogramming" the electronic control unit. They might reinitialize it, install a fresh firmware/softwa
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Concern trolling (Score:1, Insightful)
Like anyone on Slashdot gives a shit about California farmers. Haters on Slashdot only want to complain about farmers: using water, not treating farm animals like pets, not voting for the latest ultra-progressive fetish grievance rights, not setting aside half their land for some worthless endangered rat habitat. Now concern trolling about tractor repairs.
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If I mght suggest, we should care. California farming is a major source of produce for the entire USA, especially crops like avocados, tomatoes, walnuts, and hay for livestock. And intellectual property agreements that reflect, especially in law or commercial agreement, rights of a consumer to modify software affect all users of software.
Re:Concern trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
Like anyone on Slashdot gives a shit about California farmers.
You're right, few here care about the farmers but we do care about the status of Right To Repair legislation. It should be obvious that this kind of legislation is applicable to DRM and service schemes everywhere to keep tech savvy people (like slashdotters) out. You may be surprised to hear it but tons of stuff (like your car, various smart devices, etc) are all "you don't really own it" things.
That said, I do have a friend (via IRC) that is a tech savvy farmer (in Iowa) and I would like him to hack and repair his tractors to his heart's content.
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They are quarter million dollar tractors with a high level of complexity so no he's not about to go rip out the ECU and replace it with something that barely functions. -_-;
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You obviously don't realize just how complex these tractors are. At this point they are just short of being autonomous.
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Half my relatives are farmers, ranchers, or working in agriculture. I'm certainly not the only one here that knows farmers personally. Maybe you need to get outside the city more often.
No (Score:5, Informative)
No. Sounds like their own lobbying group did.
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No. Sounds like their own lobbying group did.
Not if John Deere bought out the individuals of that lobby group.
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Well, if legislators stopped allowing lobbyists to write legislation for them, we wouldn't have this problem!
NO, the Farmers Swindled themselves (Score:4, Interesting)
It never ceases to amaze me at how people often times create and support the very institutions that wind up oppressing them, while they develop Stockholm syndrome and refuse to push off the oppression they must suffer out of fear that something worse could happen.
If you are willing to make multiple deals with a lot of devils, maybe you should not complain so much and wonder at which point you caused this problem for yourself.
What's that? Everyone else is doing it? You don't have a choice? Yes, neither did every other person that risked everything to change the world huh?
The change in the world starts with you, when they are ready they will stop buying John Deere and stop giving this corrupt institution their money. Rip it to pieces and build a new that one still cares and when that one stops caring you rip it down and build a new one again.
The price is "Eternal Vigilance" and for some reason people think they can solve a problem once and for all, well you just can't.
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The farmers lobbyists colluded with John Deere (Score:2)
Sold out by their own lobbyists.
I'd hope there would be some changes in representation in the future.
I'm guessing the majority of farmers in California are large corporations, maybe owned as a subsidiary of some multi-national holding company,
The actual small scale farmers would be best served not buying new .equipment from J.D. There are probably large amounts of older/non computerized equipment available at a lower cost..
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Sold out by their own lobbyists.
That's the sad part of all this.
FFS (Score:2)
A lobbying group not pressuring legislatures to go further in the law is not "signing" anything away. It's still up to the state government. All they're doing is not pushing John Deere.
There's no long-standing agreement. So, farmers, fuck up the leadership you vote for, or drop out of that group, or start another.
openwrt (Score:2)
Nowadays features are software enabled! (Score:2)
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But everytime Tesla unlocks additional battery capacity through software for short periods on hurricane emergencies people get the idea it is putting 100
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Do tell... How do you get AC out of the car?
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http://www.coultersmithing.com... [coultersmithing.com]
It's been trouble free. I just use it to make 120v to run a RV battery charger for the main house.
I haven't used it much as I finally got "enough" panels to run the place, at least in conserve mode, even in mostly cloudy sky conditions.
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Thank you! I was hoping you'd be going off the main battery voltage, not stepping down to 12V, up to 110V, and then down near 24V...
Either way, it is cool that you can get so much power out of the 12V system. I am somewhat surprised that the Volt has chosen to run so many parts on 12V.
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Since a Volt can't count on manifold vacuum, a power steering pump, or any shaft rotation on the IC engine which is usually not running, and since 12v versions of all that stuff exist...they just made a gonzo 12v supply and went with that, prob
Yes. (Score:2)
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I disagree, the answer is No - what happened is that a famer's lobbying group sold out California's farmers' right to repair to John Deere. Different thing.
Farmers are their own worst enemy at times.... (Score:2)
Out where I live, we're seeing a lot of old family-owned farms closing up because the owners want to retire, and their kids have no interest in trying to keep working the farm. Nobody else wants to buy the land for farming it either. Really, for all the people expressing so much sorrow over the farmer's plight? The reality is that they're not taking the steps needed to remain profitable on their own terms. You talk to many of them, and they get all indignant about the farm land being bought for not only new
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No... I don't think I'm as ignorant as you claim.
I never said co-ops were a new idea that hadn't been tried yet, and I was the first suggesting it.....
I simply said that's the smarter way to do things if you're a "little guy" and can't afford to put together a farm on your own. What IS sleazy on government's part is harassing farmers with agencies like the FDA to insist they can't sell fresh eggs or unpasteurized milk, even if they have customers happy to pay for it.
Collusion isn't really the problem you p
Repair = competition. Competition is bad. (Score:2)
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.
John Deere couldn't care less about those farmers -- the money obviously lies elsewhere. Their real target for this action was 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
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The word you are looking for is called: plutocracy
AKA The other golden rule: He who has the gold, makes the rules.
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So why is the market failing to produce such an option?
Oligopolies don't have to directly collude to force consumers down this road. They simply copy each other's ideas. And if there's no choice that doesn't have this problem, consumers are still going to need to pick something.
Just look at ISPs for another example of the market not getting what it wants.
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It prevents an advantage in gaining market share, but reduces a major revenue stream. It is to the advantage of an individual manufacturer to go open-source, but it is harmful to the industry's profit margins.
The market failure is that the tractor industry is better able to collude than the farmers.
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Farmers don't care about hacking directly, but anyone that wants to get in the third party repair business would have to by definition. Farmers would certainly like a less extortionate repair option.
Re: Right to repair (Score:2)
Really expensive overdesigned cars are extremely hard and expensive to repair.
I drive an old Ford Ranger that was only $15000 brand new. It doesn't have any of the options to fail. Crank windows, no factory A.C., and the small 4 cylinder engine. It's been cheap and easy to maintain and currently has about 198,000 miles on the odometer.
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