The title of the link "144 in 2023" is incorrect. 144 is the target for 2024 as listed in the linked article. The 2023 target is 100.

The way I interpreted this (perhaps wrongly) was akin to polarization of light. You can make a filter that blocks light in one direction, but lets through light polarized in another direction. Similarly I imagined the impenetrable part was just related to matter we know from our world, but if that matter was 'polarized' differently it is no longer impenetrable.

I'm waiting to hear that the study of the costs was so expensive, all of the savings have been lost...

Three-Body Problem Trilogy by Cixin Liu

A headphone jack's full...

Precision farming helps the farmer reduce inputs and get more out of the ground and precision farming is built on software. A good example is a GPS based guidance system which automatically steers your tractor up and down the rows saving you in the order of 10% of costs on fuel and seed and labor just from driving less because the auto-steering reduces underlap and overlap in rows. There are many more software features for things like engine management (again to save the farmer money on diesel) and 100's of other things.

Modern tractors, combines and sprayers can be quite sophisticated and may have between 10-50 electronic controllers and hundreds of sensors on them to manage all of these different control and process systems. I would argue that they are more complex than modern automobiles as farmers expect that they can plug in electronically managed implements (from a different manufacturer) into their machine and to be able to control and operate it from the in-built user interface.

Sure you can buy a 30 year old tractor without the software, but your operation will be far less efficient and it will cost you more and take you longer. There are projections of the global population in 2050 for instance and the world will need to feed a lot more people and there isn't a similar proportion of arable land becoming available so farming needs to become more and more efficient. Can we optimize seed placement, even recording the position of each exact seed so that we can reduce spraying costs by only spraying the exact plant and not the entire swath of land? Software is helping with some of these things.

There are a number of alternatives, but JD is the biggest by a good margin. Some of the alternatives are listed half way down the page on the following link; http://www.technavio.com/repor... Selling parts is a huge business (like in many industries). Dealers for these OEMs can literally have businesses worth 100's of millions in their own right. Assisting customers in finding alternate parts would take business away from their own dealers who sell the machines and fund the OEM in the first place.

...and if someone modifies the engine control or transmission control software and that destroys the hardware, is that JD or the customer who is at fault by your delineation? Also, when you drive on the road you benefit from the fact that automotive manufacturers like (like planes and trains in other industries) must comply with certain practices and demonstrate that they are safe to receive a type approval which allows them to drive on the road. The same applies to tractors as they drive on the road between fields. If someone modifies their steering control software and a software fault causes the machine to veer across the road and cause one or more fatalities, who is to blame then? Is the farmer not only liable for the deaths, but also for not meeting the requirements required to drive on the roads in the first place, which typically require 1000's of hours of testing. If I am going to work for a company (a farm) as a machine operator how do I know if my owner has put on non-standard software to save a few bucks and perhaps put my life in jeopardy? I'm all for open source and will freely install on my PC, but i wouldn't put it on my car (or tractor) not only for my safety, but those around me.

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

Yes, but this was from an adjacent work station. Equivalent to unplugging your circular saw in the garage, only to be attacked by the refrigerator in the next room.

How about a camera flash detector (possibly directional), which then triggers its own high-power flash that would over expose the images of the user. Of course this presumes they are using a flash and once other passengers realized it was the cameras that were triggering the large flashes causing them temporary disorientation / blindness, they'd probably beat the crap out of the offending photographer thus limit further infractions...

Provide the same rational argument you used to convince yourself... ...If you don't have one you might ask yourself if you have any better claim that the people that do claim that humans rode them. The obvious argument is, what about the meat-eaters, they'd eat you? This doesn't mean no-one tried, just that their success was likely short-lived. =)

On the bright side, the U.S. should get at least one free back when the cloned units (complete with the same shortcoming) land safely in the U.S.

I use Outlook 2010 for work and use 'Categories' for sorting information. I have about 200 metadata tags and usually tag an email with 2-4 of them while working through my email in date ordered view. I've put the categorize button on the titlebar which automatically gets it an auto-assigned hotkey (Alt-2) in my case which means I can assign all categories for a given email as I read it in less than 5 seconds. It also means emails can exist in more than one category unlike with folders where you have to remember where you put them, unless you have a really good filing system. When I need to find something, I switch to collapsed category view (macro on toolbar) and expand the relevant category, easy to find things. I've got about 25 Gig of historical email archived into quarters and it seems to work fine. I also use a similar thing with personal email on Gmail with tags (i.e. 'Accounts' for websites I sign up for and 'orders' for things like amazon purchases). Data is only useful if you can turn it into information. My method isn't perfect, but is the best I've found for how 'I' work.