It's Bad Enough When A Company Can Own The Genetics...

...Of a cash crop, and you have to pay the license fee, even though your field was never planted with that seed (because you're downwind of someone who did use patented seeds). That's bad enough, but when your tractor, or other combine equipment, is now so filled with licensed software that you have to resort to black market hacks to do your own repairs. Whereupon you also risk losing your warranty because companies like John Deere require factory authorized maintenance now; that is really taking things too far. Throw in the fact that you have to use black hat hacks from the Ukraine, paying god knows how much more than it's really worth, and supporting god only knows who in the process (and just hoping that the hacks don't also have malicious backdoor code that could shut all infected hardware down for good?)

These are farming people we're talking about here. The very people who first created the notion of "Populism." Good, hardworking people, who bought into the notion that our de facto ex president was going to do right by them. To do that, though, would require going up against the very corporate power that hamstrings farmers at every turn now. And certainly, one way to go up against corporate power would be to "beef up" all of the watchdog agencies that act as a curb and check to corporate power (short of actually getting rid of the system that creates this mess in the first place).

Think on this for a while a then make your own conclusions.

Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware

JASON KOEBLER

Mar 21 2017, 1:17pm