The Supreme Court and Wheelers

[4.3LXJ]

Just a couple of days ago, the Supreme Court of the USA made a decision that has the potential to affect all of us. All of us that is that make any modifications to our vehicles. Here is an article about it.

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-lexmark-supreme-court-20170531-story.html

Granted, this was all about printer cartridges. However the auto makers have been pushing for rights to your computer and software in our vehicles. This means that Detroit has been advocating that you do not have the right to modify any software or cpu in your vehicle. As vehicles become more and more computerized, this would eventually give auto makers complete control over what you could do to your vehicle, including tire sizes because of the software control over speedometers. Think winch bumpers next since that could affect air bags and the list goes on. And that would include older vehicles too since that decision would be retroactive. Now, you own your vehicle once you have bought it and can do what you want with it within legal bounds of course. There will be further decisions on this subject, but for now you can alter stuff once you own it.

[drakan1908]

Years ago it was cheaper to buy a new Lexmark printer with a cartridge than buy a cartridge. Printers sold for 29.95 with cart.and cartridges were 35 to 40 dollars. I would never own another Lexmark product. When my wife and myself bought our last printer, we first priced cartridges. Guess I'll start looking for a pre computer vehicle...just in case.

Sent from a van down by the river

[bluedragon436]

Yeah I'm with ya on that Brian... I used to just replace the printer instead of spending more on a new cartridge... My current printer on the other and.. is my first "wireless" printer... and that thing is the worst on ink ever... I even bought the XL cartridges... and seems like we use it three times and it's out... I've got it on use as little as possible ink and it still rolls through ink... then again every time you want to print you have to go through a 20 minute process of manually telling it to clean the heads, and to align the heads and so on... and then it still prints like crap the first couple of prints... I will say I'll never buy another Epson printer that is for sure... Either going back to my tried and trued Lexmark or HP printers... or have been looking at possibly giving Canon a try...

Either way, I'm glad I have the XJ, which does still have a computer, but not nearly as controlling as the newer vehicles have.. and if I do go any newer on the Jeep front, I'll go to a LJ.. which is a bit more electronic than my XJ is, but only due to it going to away from a distributor and going to the coil packs.. other than that seem like I should hopefully be safe with the LJ.. Don't plan on ever going to anything newer than that for wheeling, but we shall see what happens in the future...

[abebehrmann]

In this age of hyper-partisanship it's good to see a unanimous decision in favor of the consumers!

[4.3LXJ]

So Abe, what do you think about patents on GMOs. Pretty cutthroat there especially in Canada

[blazer2]

John Deere and a few others does the same thing with there tractors.
there's some kind of link from the computer and the dealer that tell's them
that theres been a mod to the computer and turns off the tractor.

[abebehrmann]

So Abe, what do you think about patents on GMOs. Pretty cutthroat there especially in Canada

From what I've read, it seems like a pretty complicated subject. Obviously the company that develops the GMOs should have some level of ownership protection, but how far that goes I'm not really sure. I haven't really read enough to develop a well-educated opinion one way or the other.

[4.3LXJ]

From what I've read, it seems like a pretty complicated subject. Obviously the company that develops the GMOs should have some level of ownership protection, but how far that goes I'm not really sure. I haven't really read enough to develop a well-educated opinion one way or the other.

Lots of legal issues there. They apparently own those genes forever, and can charge you if they happen to wander on your land in the wind. At issue is the round up ready stuff. There have been a number of farmers taken to court on that issue