Crysis
But can it run Crysis? ;)
At DEF CON 30 on Saturday, an Australian who goes by the handle Sick Codes showed off a way to fully take control of some John Deere farming machine electronics to run first-person shooter Doom. With some rather-involved hardware hacking and the help of a New Zealand-based maker of Doom mods identified as Skelegant on Twitter …
I just read the same article as you. Did you skip over the paragraph that said exactly that?
According to author and activist Cory Doctorow, organizations that undertake legal enforcement for open source licensing issues are now aware of John Deere's alleged non-compliance.
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Could be kind of a problem, since the latest models allow them to "self drive" without anyone even in the cab. If someone hacked a tractor driving by itself via LTE and steered it off its proper plot of land and made it drive down the middle of the highway or into the nearest town they could cause a lot of havoc.
Then maybe the answer is to require an operator be in the 15-ton death-machine at all times while it is operating. Perhaps put a little "farming" back into farming instead of relying on robots and corporate lawyers.
Just wait until Husqvarna develops a self-driving chainsaw.
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> "The main bug is that nothing's encrypted or checksummed properly or anything like that," Sick explained, adding that patching the weakness out isn't practical.
I'm leaning back toward supporting John Deere on this one. If the restrictions on one's own right to repair one's own equipent boil down to "please don't", then it's no wonder the Ukrainians gained access to them so easily and the Americans haven't got a foothold.
This is a hell of a lot more than "please don't" - people have been working on this for years. It's just he approached it from the right angle.
JD rolls out the lawyers at the slightest excuse. I wonder how it'll be when they get a beating for not complying with the GPL.
IMHO, John Deere is worse than HP. HP doesn't put families out of livelihood & farm when their printers refuse an ink cartridge.
But will they get a beating or just a slap on the wrist?
The allegation is that they chose to use GPL'ed software and then chose to violate the licence, reasoning that the profits from their repairs division over many years would outweigh any future fines. (The GPL requires that the resulting product be hackable by the recipient, so JD would have to share the repairs market.)
Even if found guilty, my guess is that this line of reasoning will turn out to be correct.
"he GPL requires that the resulting product be hackable by the recipient"
Could you quote this term in the licence.
Indeed. One of the big controversies over GPL3 when it was drafted was the lack of any provision against "Tivoisation" - you can have the source code but good luck getting it to run on the hardware without the correct signing keys.
GPL 2, clause 3:
"The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable."
I take this to mean that what is delivered must be sufficient to recreate the official software, ab initio, and install it.
And, who is going to bring the lawsuit against JD? The FSF? The people behind that specific Linux distro? The makers of the hardware it's running on? Who would have standing to bring the case in the first place? The GPL kind of relies on the implicit threat that if companies don't comply it undermines their own copyrights and whatnot. You run into someone willing to roll the dice on that front, there's not a lot you can do about it.
Would the EFF have standing to bring a suit? They don’t hold the copyright to Linux or any of the code probably being misappropriated. They could potentially offer to represent someone who does have standing to sue but I doubt they could bring a case themselves and have it pass summary judgment for lack of standing.
It's a cartel in the US, just like the cable companies.
They divide up dealerships. So you have only JohnD coverng X thousand sq km and say MF covering another X thousand sq km.
So if you need that service, just pop a few thousand km down the road and all is good..
Due to the huge bribes, sorry donatiobs, its perfectly legal.
Lamborguni makes a fine one - https://www.lamborghini-tractors.com/en-eu/
Belarus also - 'bulletproof' - but might be tricky getting spare parts! - http://www.belarus-tractors.co.uk/
And of course good old Massey Fergusson are still around - https://www.masseyferguson.com/en_gb.html (inventors of the original 3 point hitch that revolutionised tractors in the 1930's).
Belarus. I once drove an 8 wheel (4 x dual 6' diameter wheels) monster. It would do 10kph max speed - regardless of what was on the back - including pulling an Artic full of grain out of a soggy field!
My brother once fell asleep at the wheel of a smaller model whilst ploughing and managed to go through 3 hedges and ditches before it was stopped by a mature Oak tree.
In my youth I used to plough (single furrow) with one of the 5 "little grey fergies" that were previously converted to run on Aviation fuel at the local military base. It is now in a museum.
"The Founder went to Ferarri for a car and Enzo told him to feck off."
Almost! I tracked it down here - https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamborghini
The relevant part is not available in English, but basic translation - Ferruccio Lamborghini owned a Ferrari 250GT with which he wasn't completely satisfied, and contacted Enzo Ferrari directly with suggestions for improvements. Ferrari replied on the lines of "What do you know about cars, you drive tractors!", which prompted Lamborghini to start making cars
> Lamborghini and tractors.... that's a juxtaposition I never expected!!!
Porsche too. >100k Porsche-design tractors made.
http://www.porsche-diesel.com/gallery.aspx
https://www.motortrend.com/vehicle-genres/porsche-diesel-tractor-models-history-origin
It is reputed that clutches and other bits on the early Lamborghinis (and Ferraris) were Fiat parts sold with heavy markup. (Of course the early Porsche sporty-cars were mostly out of the VW part bins.) (An american tractor used a stock Chrysler sedan engine; the postwar Ferguson tractor and the Triumph saloon/sportcar shared an engine with different cam/carb), with wet-sleeve cylinders ground on the machine which made so many WWII sleeve-valve airplane engines.)