… I know this because I have a busted wrist and a twisted ankle, I’m bleeding from several cuts and scrapes, and this fucking lion is stalking me for lunch…
WHY DO LIONS HAVE TO BEHAVE LIKE THAT!!
WHY DOESN’T SOMEONE ***DO*** SOMETHING ABOUT IT??
So that I can continue to treat this jungle like a playground.
so… this…
What did they expect, only wimminz dared to come forward to any of the test subjects, and the boy test subject was totally ignored, well, what a fucking surprise.
Meanwhile concurrent with stories taking the piss out of all the doom and gloom merchants prior to the Brexit vote, the rag is littered with stories about Putin invading Ukraine and China moving in to Syria and god bless the renewal of the trident missile sub programme, and of course Trump, and of course not a mention anywhere of all the canaries dropping off their perches in various financial coalmines around the globe.
Meanwhile in unrelated news, bear with me here, this one is dear to my heart…
The US EPA & HD have done a deal, from next year onwards, making any changes to your bike mean it is no longer a certified legal for road use bike, so you can either pay for and go through your own individual certification (mega $$$) or you can stick with the very very very limited factory options.
For years the jap harley clones were referred to as Yamaharley, the whoriental hog, and suchlike, albeit that technically they were better motorcycles, they just weren’t a Harley, and that alone kept HD afloat, but it seems that from 2017 on it’s gonna be HD making Yamaha / Honda / Kawasaki V twin clones, and at that point you may just as well buy the real thing, which in this case will be the Yamaha / Honda / Kawasaki bikes.
Let me be clear, what is being taken off the market is software, because since these bikes went all EFI and ECU controlled, making any changes meant making changes to the onboard software, via “tuner” software apps.
These tuner software apps were like something from Adobe, the full version that does everything is a thousand bucks and tied to your specific ECU, then there is a deliberately crippled version for 500 bucks and then there is a deliberately hugely crippled version for 250 bucks, and now the EPA deal says only the hugely crippled version may be sold or used.
I was speaking about this very danger from day one of the shift to software controlled vehicles and equipment, because I’d already seen in on software itself and in software controlled CNC equipment, and lo and behold everyone involved acts like a complete cunt and screws the customer over in the name of profit.
What it means in practical terms is from 2017 on your ability to alter your HD is severely curtailed, and what ability you have is tied to buying products exclusively from HD.
To be specific, the change in exhausts is not legal unless it comes with the appropriate and matching change in software and they comes as a packaged item from HD.
Good luck to the guy who changes his exhausts without the software, or tries to sell the old exhaust and the non transferrable software patch required.
Course over in the states everyone is blaming the fucking EPA, but if you follow the money it’s HD who obviously think they are going to coin it like Microsoft, because suddenly the aftermarket parts market is exclusively theirs.
This is what happens when you take something intangible like software and try and make it a real thing like a brick, you can’t stop people selling each other bricks, but if you manage to make the software non transferrable by tying it to that unique brick AND to your purchase, you don’t just control the new brick market, you control the used brick market too.
It all works as long as you believe that monopolistic practices are good, and that people just can’t live without bricks.
It’s kinda what happend when certain US interests bought into certain south american water companies, and suddenly half the population could not afford piped water or sewerage.
I got a river flowing 100 yards from my house, it flows winter and summer, thousands of gallons per minute, and 100% of that flow goes out to sea, but if you think they won’t arrest me if I go down to that river every day with a bunch of jerry cans you got another think coming.
- Create software
- Integrate software control into everything
- Profit
- …… crickets
Back in the analogue phone days it was illegal to plug anything but a BT made and supplied phone into the network.
My Virgin broadband won’t work without the DOCSIS virgin supplied router, because the router at the local virgin hub won’t talk to anyting but a virgin supplied router.
Sure, I can and do put it into modem mode and disable all the router functionality and run my own Draytek router, but that virgin router can’t be taken out of the loop.
*allegedly* the new US fighter jets *require* an internet connection to phone home to authorise startup, just as the HD SE tuner software *requires* to connect to the mothership for updates before it will launch.
it’s a “licencing” world we are moving in to, where you do not own anything, you merely licence it, for prices that should assure ownership.
it won’t stop, until licencing fucks up big style and knocks several million users vehicles off the road for weeks until a patch can be pushed out.
“it’s a “licencing” world we are moving in to, where you do not own anything, you merely licence it, for prices that should assure ownership.”
Prophetic words, only becoming more true every day.
In general I’m fairly laid back about minor things, and lazy when it comes to modifying toys that otherwise work fine. The only exception is general maintenance and fixing things when they break, which I try to stay on top of. Thing is, all this garbage sold today arrives broken before you even buy it. This obsessive quest for control and profit only creates shitty products that barely work as they’re supposed to. And any attempt to get them to just work is now considered a “violation of terms and service” or some other BS.
It used to be, if you bought a book, you owned it. Now, if I buy a kindle book and want to let my friend borrow it, it starts a 2 week timer where both parties have to coordinate schedules unless they want to go through the trouble of setting up the transfer when the book escapes their attention every time.
You can’t own houses, only lease them from the government. You can’t inherit a farm, you must pay huge sums of estate taxes. I used to not care that much, but it’s now becoming too obvious and ubiquitous to ignore. Why bother? No, I won’t play your game or buy your products if these are the new rules.
A car used to be a car. Now it’s a leased computer that you can drive. A phone used to be a phone, now it’s a tracking device that makes calls. I never wanted to bother with learning to root phones and mess around with them, but I’m certainly considering it now. It’s almost a necessity at this point.
This trend for absolute control and profit couldn’t come at a worse time. Most people are struggling to get by, and monopolistic rent seeking will only cause these psychopaths to try to squeeze more juice out of rocks. People are increasingly desperate, and this will only ensure that the ensuing years will be even more of an interesting time.
Comment by undefined — August 20, 2016 @ 3:44 pm
sounds like a good reason to start up a carb retrofit system for the new Hardleys?
and what with all this “bear with me” and being chased by lions, i figure you might like this, even if fake:
Comment by bob k. mando — August 21, 2016 @ 12:20 am
Yeah, okay. I live in a place with emissions testing required yearly. Every year I go to the mechanic who fucks with my car to make it pass the test, and then unfucks it to make it run properly.
If HD controls the software, all they are doing is creating a market for hacked software. If I, as a HD owner, have to have the right software running to get my plates, I will…when getting my plates.
You know, if the West really wants to become Brezhnev’s USSR, it should be kept in mind that a hundred seventy million people lived in the USSR, and they all found ways to work the system as needed. Sure, it was not great, but there were definite good sides.
Comment by B — August 21, 2016 @ 12:32 am
All the more reason to start looking into open source solutions wherever possible. With affordable programmable microcontrollers it could be possible to scratchbuild your own ECU if you knew what you were doing. I sure as hell don’t but that doesn’t mean someone out there doesn’t. It would definitely be a nice Arduino project to put out there on instructables…
Comment by Michael — August 22, 2016 @ 11:16 am
Comment by undefined — August 22, 2016 @ 2:42 pm
I get why HD wants to do it, all big company’s want to shut down the small guys. It’s why big business loves big government. Instead of out competing us they want to legislate us awsy. I deal with this all the time in trucking. Probably takes up 20% of my day
What I don’t see is how HD can pull it off in practical terms. Way to many small shops, way to many bikes with carburetors vs efi. can’t think of the products name but the tuner on my Raider doesn’t require extra software. It reads reads the fuel air mixture 90 times a second and adjusts from there. The guy who tuned my Electra glide has his on software
Seems impractical
Comment by SFC Ton — August 26, 2016 @ 12:05 am