Would you care to explain how you come to think that the program on this hardware is accompanied by its complete machine readable source code when it is placed in the hands of the user?
Of course I don't think so- that's the whole point!
Let me explain more pedantically. There are 3 parties involved: the programmer, the hardware vendor, and the end-user.
The hardware vendor desires modified Linux in his product, but doesn't want his changes becoming public. He hires the programmer to make these changes, and instructs the programmer that instead of including an offer for the source code, he is to attach the source code itself (the GPL allows you to do it either way).
Furthermore, and this is the clever part, he asks the programmer to send him not just one executable which he'll copy onto the hardware, but one separate copy of the program (including source code) for each hardware product he hopes to sell. Upon recieving these programs, he erases the source code, loads the program onto the hardware, and puts it on ebay.com.
Then, when the end-user comes along and buys the product, he doesn't have the source code, and he doesn't have an offer to recieve the source code either. He might learn from the Help-About menu that it contains GPL code, but there's no way for him to get it.
Of course, you want to object "the vendor shouldn't have been able to erase the source code if he was going to sell the program". But that contradicts an established part of USA copyright interpretation: the right of First Sale. If I buy a programming book in the store, and I take scissors and cut out each page listing source code, I can then go resell this book and nobody can stop me.
If anyone has legally acquired a copy of a copyrighted work, he can multilate that work and redistribute it, and there's nothing the copyright holder can do to stop him, since he's only distributing the very same copy that he recieved.
(I erred earlier in labelling this the "Fair Use Loophole", when it's really the "First Sale Loophole")
First, notice that that FAQ entry isn't talking about companies or corporations, but organizations. There are many kinds of organizations which are not legal entities of any sort. Organizations can be formed and unformed almost instantaneously.
All copies belong to the company, so there is no transfer of rights from the company to their employees.
If that statement holds up, then someone can offer GPL software for rent without giving the end-user any legal claim on acquiring the source code.
and not juridically recipients
The GPL does not say "juridicially recieve". It says "if you distribute this software to someone, you must give him these rights". As we've just been discussing, "distribute" means "to pass out, or spread out geographically". If you'd care to argue that "distribute" actually means "transfer ownership", then go ahead- but that contradicts both English and legal dictionaries.
Notice that if a company buys a pile of copies of a commercial program (say Norton AntiVirus), it can distribute them to it's employees in one of two ways: either giving it to them no-strings-attached, or just having them use it for a while, but still leaving the corporation as owner. One of those cases may be a lot rarer than the other, but both are possible.
So now look at the GPL. It says that IF you distribute something, you MUST give some rights to the recipient. It makes no exception if the recipient works for you; indeed, it specifically says that the distributor may place no restrictions on the recipient's possible redistribution of the software, or he is violating the GPL.
The GPL is in clear contradiction to that FAQ entry- as it should be, because a "within one organization" loophole would make the GPL impotent. The legal threshold to be an "organization" is very low, and in the time it takes to purchase a video game, you can be signing up for a new club.
AC: If your program doesn't run without the library, it's clearly a derivative work.
Take Doom3. The only version released (so far) doesn't run without DirectX 9. So is it clearly a derivative work? Does Microsoft(tm) actually own copyright on Doom?
AC: If there is a different library available (like Mesa vs SGI OpenGL
That's senseless. By that theory, I could retro-actively change a program from derived to independent if I re-implement a library previously available from a sole source. (Which would mean that all Windows(r) programs were derived from Microsoft Windows, until Wine wrote an alternative library, at which point they weren't derived anymore).
Sorry, but none of it's that simple.
What the FSF is really doing in this regard is claiming as much as possible, even if it may go a little beyond what's legal (in some countries). The question of whether dynamically linking a library is derivation is a matter for copyright law, which the GPL can't change one way or the other. But IF a court decides dynamic linking is infringing, THEN the GPL wants to restrict that use.
I thought people were arguing in the SCO case that headers are not copyrightable?
They were, because those headers were so trivial as to be just about below the minimum level of complexity for anything to be copyrighted.
The header in question was a list of UNIX error codes... the symbols and values were already defined in the UNIX specification, so the only question was if the programmer would use #define or const. It'd be like copyrighting the phone book.
Either header files can be copyrighted
It's a trivial operation to shift an abitrary amount of a program's functionality into a header file. Therefore header files, if sufficiently complex, are certainly copyrightable. But that by no means implies that any header SCO bought is so complex. (If they told anyone which headers those are, it would be easy to check...)
You might also be interested in a different GPL loophole, which can be be used in a similar situation with a leased device.
GPL section 3 enumerates three ways to comply with the requirement that recipients of the program are able to get it's source code: either you include the source code, or you include an offer for the source code.
The trick a manufacturer can use is request his programmers NOT to include an offer for the source when they compile. Instead, attach the full source code to each executable program. Install that program on all of the hardware you plan to lease. Then (and only then) zero out the parts of the program that contain the source code (maybe overwrite some unrelated data on there, and call it a "space-saving measure")
That way, when the end-users renting the device run the program, they don't have the source code there with them, and they don't get an offer to get the code, either.
(Of course, this trick can be used even without the rented hardware involved. It is more generally called the "Fair Use" GPL loophole)
I don't agree with this argument, but will try to explain how some people could.
In my book, "distribution" means: passing copies around. In that context, what's the difference between selling or leasing a device?
You are correct about "distribute". Techincally, if you pass out something to several people, you have distributed it, regardless of whether you were conferring ownership to them, or if you expect them to give the stuff back next week.
However, in certain specific legal situations (such as executing a will), "distribute" can mean confer ownership. If that definition held regarding the GPL, then anyone who rented out software for a limited time could claim the recipient has no right to ask for source code, as it hasn't been "distributed". That would be wrong, but it could take a lawsuit to prove it.
Did you take your Free Software licensing quiz today?
Not everything on those webpages is correct. In particular, they sometimes (erroneously) use a different definition of "distribute" than you just did. On FAQ claims that using a program throughout a large organization is not distribution, when obviously that can't happen without someone "passing copies around".
They should remove that FAQ, because if it were actually true, the GPL would have a loophole so large as to be essentially PD.
Mathematics is a pure science as we define "1 + 1 = 2" and say it is so.
That is absolutely not what "science" means. Anything scientific must have basis in observations of something pre-existing. If it's all just constructs of your definitions, then it isn't science at all... but math.
Physics is Mathematics
No. Physics is a subset of science. But neither math nor science is a subset of the other.
AC: I guess the sepuku/harakiri culture ended when emperor Hirohito did not kill himself after World War II...
Wrong. The suicide is not appropriate for the imperial family. I can't think of an Emperor ever killing himself... he is a god, he is infallible. If something went wrong, it must have been the fault of a lesser, imperfect person.
Plus, consider that the whole reason Japan kept on fighting a hopeless war for 5 months was to keep going until the USA promised the Emperor's safety. (They would've surrendered long earlier if they knew Hirohito wouldn't face war crime charges)
The ones who should be willing to sepuku are the samurai warrior class that works for the emperor.
Anyway, the suicide culture continued past WWII. Yukio Mishima ended his life in proper samurai style in 1970. Even today, Japan has about the highest suicide rate in the world. After corpses kept clogging up the high-speed trains, the government declared that surviving family will be billed for any traffic blocked by a suicide.
So why hasn't any hard evidence appeared over the past three and a half years?
The standard of evidence required by the NSA to demonstrate your place of residence at certain time is an interview with someone who knew you then. Cancelled rent checks won't cover it. They consider it inconcievable that someone could live/work somewhere for 6+ months without interacting with SOMEBODY who will remember him. In a closely-interactive group like a military unit, it's even less plausible that a person could have been present with nobody recalling him.
(There are many other problem's with Bush's service record then. His moving to Alabama well in advance of having a transfer approved, and his skipping of 3 physicals, each of which was absolutely mandatory for all Guardsmen)
Anyone with half a brain could successfully campaign against Bush on the issues alone.
Only if the voters have enough of a brain to care about the issues. And as broad interviews across the swing states have shown, the most popular reason to support Bush is "He stood firm against terrorism", while the typical pro-Kerry motivation is "Bush is a stupid-head".
There's a growing body of documentation about how voter apathy goes far beyond deciding to vote or not, and a distressing majority of those polled at the polls are entirely unaware of the issues at stake. (For example, less than 50% of USA voters can correctly answer "Which of the major parties is considered more conservative?") Why do they bother voting then? Entertainment value, actually- the same reason one plays the lottery, or roots for the home team even in a boring game. They want the chance to be on the winning side.
So few voters care about issues that the three most effective paths for a campaign are to push the opposition as either stupid, dishonest, or just unpleasant. Think back a bit- Reagan won on pleasant, Dukasis lost on unpleasant (tank-riding) and stupid (furlough), Bush lost on stupid (economy down) and dishonest ("Read my lips"), then Dole lost on unpleasant (he's a zombie), and finally Gore lost with unpleasant (he's a robot). So the trend is that looks & charm is the dominant "issue". All indications are that Bush will win this year, because he's got pleasantness sewn up, and he's managed to not only neutralize the stupidity area, but actually transform it into a boost to his perceived honesty ("Bush wasn't lying about Iraq- that Saddam tricked him is all")
(Rarely, they can squeeze in a "checkbook" issue if it seems to impact personal finance, but the irony there is that presidents really have little influence on jobs or growth)
If you outlaw spyware, only outlaws will have spyware!
That's actually a fine point. The FBI has already used spyware as an investigative tool. Will this law have a special exception for law-enforcement use?
i have as much faith in starwars battle front port as i do seeing hl2 released this year..
You should have less. The Valve actually promised to release HL2 soon, and they've got a financial incentive to do it (bigger sales if it's out by xmas).
But the Starwars developers not only havent expressed a plan to release a linux version, they wouldn't make any money by doing so.
I like that idea, but there would need to be a disincentive to call dibs and then not use the plane.
Oh sure. Beyond just "call dibs", you also need to be able to take a number, saving you a place in the cockpit after all the teammates who selected that vehicle before you have gotten a turn.
Battlefront, unlike BF1942, doesn't have a shortcut to request air support (or any other specific kind of help, for that matter),
That's too bad. Maybe they focused more on X-Box live, where everyone will have a headset. But still, it'd be useful if you could 'ping' the map so that everyone knows where you're talking about.
uest air support (or any other specific kind of help, for that matter), which would hinder the process. In BF1942, it was always gratifying to hear someone call for air cover, see him flash on the map, and come rescue him from a Tiger
Instead of just "I need air support", it should've had separate commands for "I need something bombed" and "Get that freaking plane away from me"- different air support needs deserve a different kind of response.
No lie there. Do a google search on Abu Wa'el and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi if you don't believe me.
Ok, searching done. Abu Wael wasn't senior, and al-Zarqawi was not then (and isn't now) a member of al-Quaida. Besides the fact that the CIA pegs him as outside of Iraq at that time.
Bush's case for the war was that we could not allow potential threats to go unchecked, as we did with Al Qaeda all those years.
Note the irony that Clinton repeatedly ordered Osama's death, while one of Bush's first acts on taking office was to make nice with the Taliban.
Bush didn't claim that Iraq was a potential threat- he said it was an immediate threat, right now.
Note that by invading Iraq, and pulling away the troops hunting Al Quaida, he is allowing them to go unchecked again.
Note that if you want to talk about threat potential, then Iran and North Korea dwarf anything Iraq had.
Never, ever, call Twirlip lazy. He is one of the most intelligent, hard-working trolls you will ever meet. And he could take Scott McClellan's job in an instant if he wanted it.
However, if a team wanted to work together to win instead of act like a bunch of selfish children
It can happen- but it's up to the game designers to help the players communicate their plans.
For example, you can talk to each other on the X-Box live headsets, so you COULD be constantly telling everyone where you are- but isn't it nicer to just see a map of teammate's positions in the corner? Saves a lot of repetive chitchat.
Likewise, SWBattlefront players COULD discuss who's going to take the starfighter before they spawn, but that conversation would be difficult to keep track of, and impossible to enforce.
The Pilots/Plane-Camping problem can have the same solution. The only reason planecamping is a problem in bf1942 today is that the players on a team don't know who's going to want to fly until it's too late and everyone has spawned and run for the airstrip.
If the game made it possible for you to "call dibs" on an airplane earlier on (like way back in the spawn menu), then the problem wouldn't happen. Players who were too late to click on the plane in the menu would KNOW that there won't be one at the airport for them, and they'll go off and do something else, instead of camp for it.
It would make more sense if only pilots could get in the pilot's seat of speeders and fighters
Yes, it would make sense- and also be a bad game (unless something fundamental about the spawning and vehicle-selection interface was changed)
If only pilots could get vehicles, then all players would spawn as pilots, because they want cool vehicles. But there aren't enough vehicles to go around, so that leaves most of the team stuck as wimpy pilots who can't fight.
The player classes don't always make sense, either.
Actually the classes seem mostly taken from Desert Combat. That highly-popular mod gives both healing and vehicle repair abilities to the weakly-armed class called "Support". If you're planning to operate a land vehicle, then you don't actually care about your own weapon strength, but healing the vehicle is important. So Supports acted like the "Driver" class.
Right now, the closest thing to a demolition unit is the one with the missile launcher, which can lay mines.
Likewise, Desert Combat had the "Anti Armor" class, with missiles and mines.
Also, I'd rather see a dedicated medic class.
Dedicated medics are only good if they can revive incapacitated people, rather than merely restore health-points to someone who's perfectly active. (Compare the value of a medic in RTCW with bf1942 to see what I mean)
If I were you, I wouldn't brag too loudly about the fact that you lack the basic human intelligence required to understand things like speeches
By "understanding speeches", it seems you mean "expect to be lied to, and don't let it bother you".
Sorry. Although the lies are no surprise to me, I still hold the liar accountable for what he said.
PS. The best thing about you is that all your insults apply better to yourself than anyone else. It's amazing that the rubber-glue refutation is actually still applicable in this age and medium.
Look, do you not REMEMBER that Bush asked the UN for a resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq? It's baffling* how people can support Bush, yet refuse to even listen to his own words.
Here's one lie: "The Iraqi regime has acquired and tested the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction" Here's another: "We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner."
That's how GWB made his case for war. Bush didn't focus on the minutiae of UN resolutions- he made a bigger, bolder case. So when I choose to judge him by the position he took, you can't fall back on a little detail which by itself would never have justified the expensive occupation.
Was the USA "justified" invading Iraq? From the legal standpoint, sure- they'd been at war for 12 straight years, that's just an escalation. From the perspective of it being the right away to achieve the country's short or long term goals- absolutely not.
made the UN word strong by enforcing resolutions that had been on the books for 13 years.
I love that! Made their word strong by going against their specific directions! "Vigilantism" is the most generous way to describe it.
* Not really baffling. I have enough psychological training to understand the tribal thought processes leading to those actions- I just don't like them.
Electoral-Vote which uses the more scientific Zogby poll mainly,
Actually they only use Zogby 23% of the time. But that is more focused on the swing states that actually matter. Interestingly, for the most swinging state of all, Florida, Electoral-Vote uses Ramussen, not Zogby.
it will be hard for Bush to top the blunder that Iraq has turned into. 15,000 dead so far between Iraq and US sides,
Yes, that's exactly why Kerry is in so much trouble. Bush has screwed up very badly and is still in the lead, so it's hard to imagine anything he could do worse in the next month to lose him the election.
except that when you are contesting a spawn point, enemies still seem to spawn, which is extremely frustrating
That is really bad, from the perspective of both attackers and defenders. Either the attacker will be swamped by a wave of respawners coming in, or he'll defend himself by camping the spawn and killing them the instant they show up. Neither choice is fun gameplay. Spawning someone close to an enemy should be avoided by the game designers as much as possible: if an enemy is in the forward base, then spawn people to the rear base.
The Imperials literally walk all over the Rebels on Hoth and Endor, due to their mechanical advantage.
Hopefully, that might only be due to inexperienced players. When Battlefield 1942 game out, one could complain "The Axis literally roll over the Allies on Market Garden, due to their mechanical advantage". But in a week or so, the players learn to plant landmines and fly planes, and Market Garden became a dedicated Allied blowout.
Prehaps the same thing will happen in Battlefront- maybe there's a trick to using the snowspeeders right, and as soon as players learn what it is, the life expectancy of walkers will go way down.
There was talk of a Linux port. Anyone have an update?
The developers gave absolutely no suggestion of a Linux version, aside from the dedicated server that all PC multiplayer games get. Anything more is just over-optimistic speculation.
Slashdot Mirror
Would you care to explain how you come to think that the program on this hardware is accompanied by its complete machine readable source code when it is placed in the hands of the user?
Of course I don't think so- that's the whole point!
Let me explain more pedantically. There are 3 parties involved: the programmer, the hardware vendor, and the end-user.
The hardware vendor desires modified Linux in his product, but doesn't want his changes becoming public. He hires the programmer to make these changes, and instructs the programmer that instead of including an offer for the source code, he is to attach the source code itself (the GPL allows you to do it either way).
Furthermore, and this is the clever part, he asks the programmer to send him not just one executable which he'll copy onto the hardware, but one separate copy of the program (including source code) for each hardware product he hopes to sell. Upon recieving these programs, he erases the source code, loads the program onto the hardware, and puts it on ebay.com.
Then, when the end-user comes along and buys the product, he doesn't have the source code, and he doesn't have an offer to recieve the source code either. He might learn from the Help-About menu that it contains GPL code, but there's no way for him to get it.
Of course, you want to object "the vendor shouldn't have been able to erase the source code if he was going to sell the program". But that contradicts an established part of USA copyright interpretation: the right of First Sale. If I buy a programming book in the store, and I take scissors and cut out each page listing source code, I can then go resell this book and nobody can stop me.
If anyone has legally acquired a copy of a copyrighted work, he can multilate that work and redistribute it, and there's nothing the copyright holder can do to stop him, since he's only distributing the very same copy that he recieved.
(I erred earlier in labelling this the "Fair Use Loophole", when it's really the "First Sale Loophole")
First, notice that that FAQ entry isn't talking about companies or corporations, but organizations. There are many kinds of organizations which are not legal entities of any sort. Organizations can be formed and unformed almost instantaneously.
All copies belong to the company, so there is no transfer of rights from the company to their employees.
If that statement holds up, then someone can offer GPL software for rent without giving the end-user any legal claim on acquiring the source code.
and not juridically recipients
The GPL does not say "juridicially recieve". It says "if you distribute this software to someone, you must give him these rights". As we've just been discussing, "distribute" means "to pass out, or spread out geographically". If you'd care to argue that "distribute" actually means "transfer ownership", then go ahead- but that contradicts both English and legal dictionaries.
Notice that if a company buys a pile of copies of a commercial program (say Norton AntiVirus), it can distribute them to it's employees in one of two ways: either giving it to them no-strings-attached, or just having them use it for a while, but still leaving the corporation as owner. One of those cases may be a lot rarer than the other, but both are possible.
So now look at the GPL. It says that IF you distribute something, you MUST give some rights to the recipient. It makes no exception if the recipient works for you; indeed, it specifically says that the distributor may place no restrictions on the recipient's possible redistribution of the software, or he is violating the GPL.
The GPL is in clear contradiction to that FAQ entry- as it should be, because a "within one organization" loophole would make the GPL impotent. The legal threshold to be an "organization" is very low, and in the time it takes to purchase a video game, you can be signing up for a new club.
AC: If your program doesn't run without the library, it's clearly a derivative work.
Take Doom3. The only version released (so far) doesn't run without DirectX 9. So is it clearly a derivative work? Does Microsoft(tm) actually own copyright on Doom?
AC: If there is a different library available (like Mesa vs SGI OpenGL
That's senseless. By that theory, I could retro-actively change a program from derived to independent if I re-implement a library previously available from a sole source. (Which would mean that all Windows(r) programs were derived from Microsoft Windows, until Wine wrote an alternative library, at which point they weren't derived anymore).
Sorry, but none of it's that simple.
What the FSF is really doing in this regard is claiming as much as possible, even if it may go a little beyond what's legal (in some countries). The question of whether dynamically linking a library is derivation is a matter for copyright law, which the GPL can't change one way or the other. But IF a court decides dynamic linking is infringing, THEN the GPL wants to restrict that use.
I thought people were arguing in the SCO case that headers are not copyrightable?
They were, because those headers were so trivial as to be just about below the minimum level of complexity for anything to be copyrighted.
The header in question was a list of UNIX error codes... the symbols and values were already defined in the UNIX specification, so the only question was if the programmer would use #define or const. It'd be like copyrighting the phone book.
Either header files can be copyrighted
It's a trivial operation to shift an abitrary amount of a program's functionality into a header file. Therefore header files, if sufficiently complex, are certainly copyrightable. But that by no means implies that any header SCO bought is so complex. (If they told anyone which headers those are, it would be easy to check...)
You might also be interested in a different GPL loophole, which can be be used in a similar situation with a leased device.
GPL section 3 enumerates three ways to comply with the requirement that recipients of the program are able to get it's source code: either you include the source code, or you include an offer for the source code.
The trick a manufacturer can use is request his programmers NOT to include an offer for the source when they compile. Instead, attach the full source code to each executable program. Install that program on all of the hardware you plan to lease. Then (and only then) zero out the parts of the program that contain the source code (maybe overwrite some unrelated data on there, and call it a "space-saving measure")
That way, when the end-users renting the device run the program, they don't have the source code there with them, and they don't get an offer to get the code, either.
(Of course, this trick can be used even without the rented hardware involved. It is more generally called the "Fair Use" GPL loophole)
I don't agree with this argument, but will try to explain how some people could.
In my book, "distribution" means: passing copies around. In that context, what's the difference between selling or leasing a device?
You are correct about "distribute". Techincally, if you pass out something to several people, you have distributed it, regardless of whether you were conferring ownership to them, or if you expect them to give the stuff back next week.
However, in certain specific legal situations (such as executing a will), "distribute" can mean confer ownership. If that definition held regarding the GPL, then anyone who rented out software for a limited time could claim the recipient has no right to ask for source code, as it hasn't been "distributed". That would be wrong, but it could take a lawsuit to prove it.
Did you take your Free Software licensing quiz today?
Not everything on those webpages is correct. In particular, they sometimes (erroneously) use a different definition of "distribute" than you just did. On FAQ claims that using a program throughout a large organization is not distribution, when obviously that can't happen without someone "passing copies around".
They should remove that FAQ, because if it were actually true, the GPL would have a loophole so large as to be essentially PD.
Mathematics is a pure science as we define "1 + 1 = 2" and say it is so.
That is absolutely not what "science" means. Anything scientific must have basis in observations of something pre-existing. If it's all just constructs of your definitions, then it isn't science at all... but math.
Physics is Mathematics
No. Physics is a subset of science. But neither math nor science is a subset of the other.
AC: I guess the sepuku/harakiri culture ended when emperor Hirohito did not kill himself after World War II...
Wrong. The suicide is not appropriate for the imperial family. I can't think of an Emperor ever killing himself... he is a god, he is infallible. If something went wrong, it must have been the fault of a lesser, imperfect person.
Plus, consider that the whole reason Japan kept on fighting a hopeless war for 5 months was to keep going until the USA promised the Emperor's safety. (They would've surrendered long earlier if they knew Hirohito wouldn't face war crime charges)
The ones who should be willing to sepuku are the samurai warrior class that works for the emperor.
Anyway, the suicide culture continued past WWII. Yukio Mishima ended his life in proper samurai style in 1970. Even today, Japan has about the highest suicide rate in the world. After corpses kept clogging up the high-speed trains, the government declared that surviving family will be billed for any traffic blocked by a suicide.
The only objective evidence that he did not have a lousy record was soundly trounced as being a forgery.
That's true... but did you mean to say so?
So why hasn't any hard evidence appeared over the past three and a half years?
The standard of evidence required by the NSA to demonstrate your place of residence at certain time is an interview with someone who knew you then. Cancelled rent checks won't cover it. They consider it inconcievable that someone could live/work somewhere for 6+ months without interacting with SOMEBODY who will remember him. In a closely-interactive group like a military unit, it's even less plausible that a person could have been present with nobody recalling him.
(There are many other problem's with Bush's service record then. His moving to Alabama well in advance of having a transfer approved, and his skipping of 3 physicals, each of which was absolutely mandatory for all Guardsmen)
Anyone with half a brain could successfully campaign against Bush on the issues alone.
Only if the voters have enough of a brain to care about the issues. And as broad interviews across the swing states have shown, the most popular reason to support Bush is "He stood firm against terrorism", while the typical pro-Kerry motivation is "Bush is a stupid-head".
There's a growing body of documentation about how voter apathy goes far beyond deciding to vote or not, and a distressing majority of those polled at the polls are entirely unaware of the issues at stake. (For example, less than 50% of USA voters can correctly answer "Which of the major parties is considered more conservative?") Why do they bother voting then? Entertainment value, actually- the same reason one plays the lottery, or roots for the home team even in a boring game. They want the chance to be on the winning side.
So few voters care about issues that the three most effective paths for a campaign are to push the opposition as either stupid, dishonest, or just unpleasant. Think back a bit- Reagan won on pleasant, Dukasis lost on unpleasant (tank-riding) and stupid (furlough), Bush lost on stupid (economy down) and dishonest ("Read my lips"), then Dole lost on unpleasant (he's a zombie), and finally Gore lost with unpleasant (he's a robot). So the trend is that looks & charm is the dominant "issue". All indications are that Bush will win this year, because he's got pleasantness sewn up, and he's managed to not only neutralize the stupidity area, but actually transform it into a boost to his perceived honesty ("Bush wasn't lying about Iraq- that Saddam tricked him is all")
(Rarely, they can squeeze in a "checkbook" issue if it seems to impact personal finance, but the irony there is that presidents really have little influence on jobs or growth)
the liberal media who tried to pull off the lie here
That claim compares very amusingly with the standard defense of Bush's pre-invasion falsehoods: "He wasn't lying, because he believed it at the time"
The same defense can be applied to both.
If you outlaw spyware, only outlaws will have spyware!
That's actually a fine point. The FBI has already used spyware as an investigative tool. Will this law have a special exception for law-enforcement use?
i have as much faith in starwars battle front port as i do seeing hl2 released this year..
You should have less. The Valve actually promised to release HL2 soon, and they've got a financial incentive to do it (bigger sales if it's out by xmas).
But the Starwars developers not only havent expressed a plan to release a linux version, they wouldn't make any money by doing so.
I gave up on BF1942 when I realized I was spending more time downloading patches
That can't possibly be true! After all, one single patch accounts for 75% of all BF1942 gameplay (and the original games is the other 20%).
Your problem is you want variety. Just play DC or Omaha 24/7 and it'll work smoothly.
I like that idea, but there would need to be a disincentive to call dibs and then not use the plane.
Oh sure. Beyond just "call dibs", you also need to be able to take a number, saving you a place in the cockpit after all the teammates who selected that vehicle before you have gotten a turn.
Battlefront, unlike BF1942, doesn't have a shortcut to request air support (or any other specific kind of help, for that matter),
That's too bad. Maybe they focused more on X-Box live, where everyone will have a headset. But still, it'd be useful if you could 'ping' the map so that everyone knows where you're talking about.
uest air support (or any other specific kind of help, for that matter), which would hinder the process. In BF1942, it was always gratifying to hear someone call for air cover, see him flash on the map, and come rescue him from a Tiger
Instead of just "I need air support", it should've had separate commands for "I need something bombed" and "Get that freaking plane away from me"- different air support needs deserve a different kind of response.
No lie there. Do a google search on Abu Wa'el and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi if you don't believe me.
Ok, searching done. Abu Wael wasn't senior, and al-Zarqawi was not then (and isn't now) a member of al-Quaida. Besides the fact that the CIA pegs him as outside of Iraq at that time.
Bush's case for the war was that we could not allow potential threats to go unchecked, as we did with Al Qaeda all those years.
Note the irony that Clinton repeatedly ordered Osama's death, while one of Bush's first acts on taking office was to make nice with the Taliban.
Bush didn't claim that Iraq was a potential threat- he said it was an immediate threat, right now.
Note that by invading Iraq, and pulling away the troops hunting Al Quaida, he is allowing them to go unchecked again.
Note that if you want to talk about threat potential, then Iran and North Korea dwarf anything Iraq had.
No lie there. Since the March 2003 invasion we have uncovered Iraqi plans t
It's just impossible to hold a serious conversation with people who can't tell the difference between past and future tense verbs.
Since you are too lazy to look it up
Never, ever, call Twirlip lazy. He is one of the most intelligent, hard-working trolls you will ever meet. And he could take Scott McClellan's job in an instant if he wanted it.
However, if a team wanted to work together to win instead of act like a bunch of selfish children
It can happen- but it's up to the game designers to help the players communicate their plans.
For example, you can talk to each other on the X-Box live headsets, so you COULD be constantly telling everyone where you are- but isn't it nicer to just see a map of teammate's positions in the corner? Saves a lot of repetive chitchat.
Likewise, SWBattlefront players COULD discuss who's going to take the starfighter before they spawn, but that conversation would be difficult to keep track of, and impossible to enforce.
The Pilots/Plane-Camping problem can have the same solution. The only reason planecamping is a problem in bf1942 today is that the players on a team don't know who's going to want to fly until it's too late and everyone has spawned and run for the airstrip.
If the game made it possible for you to "call dibs" on an airplane earlier on (like way back in the spawn menu), then the problem wouldn't happen. Players who were too late to click on the plane in the menu would KNOW that there won't be one at the airport for them, and they'll go off and do something else, instead of camp for it.
It would make more sense if only pilots could get in the pilot's seat of speeders and fighters
Yes, it would make sense- and also be a bad game (unless something fundamental about the spawning and vehicle-selection interface was changed)
If only pilots could get vehicles, then all players would spawn as pilots, because they want cool vehicles. But there aren't enough vehicles to go around, so that leaves most of the team stuck as wimpy pilots who can't fight.
The player classes don't always make sense, either.
Actually the classes seem mostly taken from Desert Combat. That highly-popular mod gives both healing and vehicle repair abilities to the weakly-armed class called "Support". If you're planning to operate a land vehicle, then you don't actually care about your own weapon strength, but healing the vehicle is important. So Supports acted like the "Driver" class.
Right now, the closest thing to a demolition unit is the one with the missile launcher, which can lay mines.
Likewise, Desert Combat had the "Anti Armor" class, with missiles and mines.
Also, I'd rather see a dedicated medic class.
Dedicated medics are only good if they can revive incapacitated people, rather than merely restore health-points to someone who's perfectly active. (Compare the value of a medic in RTCW with bf1942 to see what I mean)
If I were you, I wouldn't brag too loudly about the fact that you lack the basic human intelligence required to understand things like speeches
By "understanding speeches", it seems you mean "expect to be lied to, and don't let it bother you".
Sorry. Although the lies are no surprise to me, I still hold the liar accountable for what he said.
PS. The best thing about you is that all your insults apply better to yourself than anyone else. It's amazing that the rubber-glue refutation is actually still applicable in this age and medium.
Look, do you not REMEMBER that Bush asked the UN for a resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq? It's baffling* how people can support Bush, yet refuse to even listen to his own words.
Here's one lie: "The Iraqi regime has acquired and tested the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction"
Here's another: "We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner."
That's how GWB made his case for war. Bush didn't focus on the minutiae of UN resolutions- he made a bigger, bolder case. So when I choose to judge him by the position he took, you can't fall back on a little detail which by itself would never have justified the expensive occupation.
Was the USA "justified" invading Iraq?
From the legal standpoint, sure- they'd been at war for 12 straight years, that's just an escalation.
From the perspective of it being the right away to achieve the country's short or long term goals- absolutely not.
made the UN word strong by enforcing resolutions that had been on the books for 13 years.
I love that! Made their word strong by going against their specific directions! "Vigilantism" is the most generous way to describe it.
* Not really baffling. I have enough psychological training to understand the tribal thought processes leading to those actions- I just don't like them.
incredibly biased Gallup Poll.
Actually that mainly comes from ARG.
Electoral-Vote which uses the more scientific Zogby poll mainly,
Actually they only use Zogby 23% of the time. But that is more focused on the swing states that actually matter. Interestingly, for the most swinging state of all, Florida, Electoral-Vote uses Ramussen, not Zogby.
it will be hard for Bush to top the blunder that Iraq has turned into. 15,000 dead so far between Iraq and US sides,
Yes, that's exactly why Kerry is in so much trouble. Bush has screwed up very badly and is still in the lead, so it's hard to imagine anything he could do worse in the next month to lose him the election.
except that when you are contesting a spawn point, enemies still seem to spawn, which is extremely frustrating
That is really bad, from the perspective of both attackers and defenders. Either the attacker will be swamped by a wave of respawners coming in, or he'll defend himself by camping the spawn and killing them the instant they show up. Neither choice is fun gameplay. Spawning someone close to an enemy should be avoided by the game designers as much as possible: if an enemy is in the forward base, then spawn people to the rear base.
The Imperials literally walk all over the Rebels on Hoth and Endor, due to their mechanical advantage.
Hopefully, that might only be due to inexperienced players. When Battlefield 1942 game out, one could complain "The Axis literally roll over the Allies on Market Garden, due to their mechanical advantage". But in a week or so, the players learn to plant landmines and fly planes, and Market Garden became a dedicated Allied blowout.
Prehaps the same thing will happen in Battlefront- maybe there's a trick to using the snowspeeders right, and as soon as players learn what it is, the life expectancy of walkers will go way down.
There was talk of a Linux port. Anyone have an update?
The developers gave absolutely no suggestion of a Linux version, aside from the dedicated server that all PC multiplayer games get. Anything more is just over-optimistic speculation.
Slashdot posted an incorrect headline on the subject- the actual article had zero mention of a Linux client. Only server.