FALCON BMS: WHAT HARRIERS DO BEST

Another strike deep in defended enemy territory.... through the valleys towards the danger... not everything went to plan....

FALCON BMS: STRIKERS "FROM DUSK TILL DAWN"

A fast and aggressive low level strike on air defences near the border.... SA-2 and SA-3 sites are target and all of this done under the nose of an SA-10 in the East....

#SAVEOURINTERNET IMPORTANT

PLEASE READ BELOW REGARDING THE EU AND THEIR DUMB ASS PLANS

https://dontwreckthe.net/index.html

We should be very careful before making significant changes to fundamental concepts of how the internet works.Unfortunately, Articles 11 and 13 of the EU Copyright Directive take a wrecking ball to those core concepts, and do so with little thought or understanding of the 2nd and 3rd order effects these moves will have on innovation and the ability to communicate online. Ideally, during trilogue negotiations, the EU would choose to remove entirely both Article 11 and 13, as they are not fit for purpose. Barring that, however, we have a number of suggestions for ways to improve both proposals.

After many years and a variety of different proposals, the EU Council passed an EU Copyright Directive in May 2018, and the EU Parliament passed its version in September. The intent behind this proposal has been laudable: in an attempt to harmonize copyright law across the EU member states, it makes sense to create a larger framework that might open up a larger market and enable services to flourish with access to a much larger market, without having to adjust and adapt to each distinct set of local market rules.

Unfortunately, there are grave concerns over the impact of these laws on the way the internet works, on the incentives and market structure for innovation, and on how it will impact creativity and communication online.

OUR CONCERNS

Article 11 will stifle the flow of news and information.

The "link tax" won't help news publishers, but it will harm the internet.

Bad For Readers

A link tax will make it harder for readers to find and share news on their platform of choice, and will reduce the number of alternative perspectives and analyses to explore.

Bad For Publishers

Link taxes don't increase revenue, but they do reduce circulation — especially for small and independent publishers who rely most heavily on online platforms.

Bad For Online Services

The vague language around the link tax makes it impossible for websites to know if they are following the rules, likely forcing them to reduce or eliminate news sharing altogether.

Specific problems with Article 11 include:

• A link tax has been tried before in both Germany and Spain and ended up being a disaster in both places, leading to no new payments to media organizations, less overall access to news for the public, and significant harm to smaller publishers.
• Media publishers already have tools, such as robots.txt to stop aggregators from scraping their site. That they choose not to suggests that they see and appreciate the value they get from aggregators who send them traffic. Not only that, but nearly every site engages in search engine optimization, which involves quite a bit of money and resources focused on appearing even higher in aggregators such as Google News, demonstrating, again, the value news organizations see from aggregation sites.
• The initial wording of Article 11 is extremely vague, such that there is reasonable fear that some will interpret it to mean that mere links that include just 1 or a few words from the story or headlines violates the rules.
• Many media sites actually would prefer to share their works for free, and support open access systems and tools, including open licenses like Creative Commons -- some of which might not be allowed under interpretations of Article 11.
• Under the existing vague terms, what sites qualify as a media site is already vague, which could cause confusion and additional problems as lots of sites clamor for payments from the licenses for news aggregation.

Article 13 will result in censorship and waste.

Intermediary liability and mandatory upload filters will cause chaos for user-generated content platforms.

Bad For Users

Users will have less choice, less access to content, and less opportunity to comment and interact online as liability and filtering limits online platform capabilities and innovation.

Bad For Creators

Intermediary liability encourages creative platform providers to greatly limit what users can do, while upload filters inevitably lead to false positives that block creators' work.

Bad For Online Platforms

User-generated content becomes a massive risk for online platforms when they are liable as intermediaries, making that kind of innovation all but impossible.

Specific problems with Article 13 include:

• Putting liability on intermediaries has been shown, time and time again, to lead to significant censorship, as the incentives are to pull down lots of content, rather than face liability.
• The vague terms in Article 13 will lead to over-censorship. Two decades of evidence (such as with the US's DMCA notice-and-takedown provisions, which are much less burdensome) already show this. Expanding such liability massively will similarly increase censorship online.
• Many of the proposals in Article 13 create literally impossible standards, requiring a prevention of infringement on platforms that cannot be accomplished. This will result in constant litigation.
• The vague language in the various proposals leaves it entirely unclear what will be enough to avoid liability, creating confusion, leading to wasteful spending on a variety of ineffective “solutions” and massive censorship.
• The costs associated with this can and will only be borne by the largest companies, locking in the dominant platforms of today (nearly all American companies), leaving little room for innovation and competition.

SUGGESTED FIXES

We believe that neither Article 11 nor 13 serves any reasonable purpose. Not only will both create massive problems for the internet, they will similarly create massive problems for the content creators they claim to help. That said, if the EU insists on moving forward, it is critical that key fixes be made and the language be clarified.

Fixes For Article 11

• Clarify in great detail what will require a license. There has been concern about whether a single word would qualify, or a link. The existing text does little to clarify this and leaves this open to widespread abuse. The European Parliament's amended text in Recital 33 helps to clarify this, but could go further.
• Greatly limit what sites this applies to. The current “digital uses” is so broad as to include basically any use — even those beyond the internet. If the target is news aggregators, then make that explicit. The European Council's use of “online uses” rather than “digital uses” is an improvement, but could go further.
• The license should only apply to the use of significant amounts of content, well beyond a single sentence or headline, and should only apply in cases where the content might act as a substitute.
• Only require licenses for making content available, not for the simple act of copying or indexing.
• Similarly it should be clarified that Article 11 does not apply to individual users, but only largest sites engaged in the aggregation of news.
• Clarify what a “press publisher” is under the law. As it stands that is unclear, and thus could be interpreted to include all sorts of sites. In particular, it should exclude “news agencies” as the widespread use of news wires could mean a variety of different licenses are necessary for the same content (for example in the case of aggregating news from a newspaper that republishes an AP/Reuters piece — would a news aggregator require a license from both the newspaper directly and the wire service?)
• Additionally, make it clear that a press publisher does not include scientific journals and similar non-news-based publications.
• Reduce the term of this protection from 20 years to no more than one year. The concern raised by certain press publishers is almost entirely about competition on timely news. After a year, the news is no longer timely. Leaving a term of 20 years will almost certainly harm the ability to archive historical news coverage that is unlikely to last 20 years.
• Make sure that press publishers are free to opt-out of any mandatory licensing, enabling them to set up whatever business model and licensing structure they prefer, including open access and Creative Commons-style licensing.
• Create exceptions for smaller sites and those not focused exclusively on news or those who provide significant commentary around the news.
• Create a clear exception for factual information, rather than creative information.

Fixes For Article 13

• Maintain the hosting safe harbour, letting platforms know exactly what they can do to avoid liability.
• Make it explicit that existing liability protections, such as those in the E-Commerce Directive remain in place even under Article 13.
• Clearly define what is meant by “appropriate and proportionate” as it provides absolutely no guidance to service providers and is left wide open for litigation and abuse.
• Clarify what alternatives there are to upload filters to avoid liability
• Clarify which “service providers” Article 13 applies to in much more detail. This includes a clear definition of “public access to large amounts of works.” What is “large”?
• Instead of merely having this cover service providers who provide access to “large amounts of works,” have it apply only to providers who provide “large amounts of infringing works.” There are multiple platforms that provide access to lots of works, with very little infringement, and they should not be overly burdened by rules designed to prevent abuse when they have little to no abuse.
• Create clear exceptions for sites to protect innovation and free speech. Specifically, make it explicit that user rights concerning parody, fair dealing and similar rights are exempt from licensing requirements.
• There should be clear and significant penalties for providing false reports of infringement.
• Copyright holders should be required to provide any platforms with specific identifying information, ownership details and content information in order to identify infringing works.
• Copyright holders should be required to help platforms identify specific cases of infringement to be addressed, rather than requiring service providers to police every corner of their services.
• There need to be clear exceptions for sites that make a good faith effort to comply, but that inadvertently allow some infringement to slip through on their platforms.
• Introduce a fair use-like exception in the EU that can legalize memes, remixes and other everyday online culture.
• Since the purpose of Article 13 is focused on music and video sites, the rules should be specifically limited to those types of sites to avoid burdening platforms in other areas where the requirements of Article 13 do not make any sense at all.
• There should be required transparency reports on how Article 13 is being used, including reports on abusive claims of infringement.

#SAVEOURINTERNET

X4: Foundations

Well guys tomorrow (30th of November) is a day that I have been looking forward to for a long time..... X4: Foundations is to be released and after watching Obsidian Ant play the beta I am so far pretty impressed with what they have done....

If you wished to see the beta game play you can here.... :

and for the actual trailer for the game check here:

Can't wait to get back into a really good space game... and the X series have always been fantastic for story, dynamic finance and industry, and faction interaction.  You really can build a galactic empire and have influence over the entire economy........ Check it out... pretty exciting stuff.....

FALCON BMS: A PATH FOR MIRAGES

A fun support and SEAD flight allowing French Mirages in to Strike an airport and Refinery deep in hostile territory.

Sit back and enjoy.....

FALCON BMS: DOGFIGHT SESSION WITH SIDEWINDER

FALCON BMS: DEATH VALLEY

A nice chilled out NOE flight through the mountains to target where we destroy a radar site which will prevent enemy low level radar picking us up in future operations in the area.....

FALCON BMS: TACVIEW AND RAMBLINGS

Some people asked to see some tacviews of past flight and I have never done that... so today I decided I would do just that as I had the tacview from the previous flight which I put up "Rapid Strike"... so watch that first and then what I go over in the tacview makes much more sense.



The video is really just some of my thoughts and ramblings of how we did the flight.... probably better tacviews in larger flights would have been better but the last on is fresh in my heads and others so used that instead.



Anyways.... rambling in text format now.... so I will shut up and let you enjoy....

FALCON BMS: RAPID STRIKE

In the Harrier Jump Jet for an unusual but fun flight I had with Lorik... he was lead as it was in his campaign and I was along for the ride. Fast low level strike with multiple SAMS which required us to be working extra hard to stay alive...

Cracking Onboard Footage Hawk Saudi Display Team

FALCON BMS: 14 SHIP PACKAGE (MULTIPLAYER) MISSION TO SERBIA

14 Ship Multi Strike Package (Mass Multiplayer)

Privilaged to fly with this lot.... nothing else needs to be said!

A great mission where comms and situational awareness were absolutely key to its' success...

FALCON BMS: NOTHING AS PLANNED IN BABA YAGA

A Strike mission deep in enemy territory, I provide air defence suppression and also provide a CAP. Things most definitely don't go to plan but all work hard together to make it work. Made for a very tense and interesting mission.

ASSETTO CORSA: THE ALFA CUP (155Ti)

A fun race where the top 21 cars all qualified within 1.2 seconds so I knew the race would be a patience game..... Every car is identical on the grid as it is the Alfa Cup....tyres melt but ends being the last lap for the win!

FALCON BMS: THE SA-17 HUNT (BABA YAGA CAMPAIGN)

Hi guys here is another video where Lorik needed some pilots for his campaign.... Waichou, Flow and myself stepped in for a long haul flight deep into enemy territory. The flight was over 2 hours long and was a difficult SA-17 DEAD mission. Flow took a hit and made it back, Waichou also made it home safely after an abort due to fuel concerns.... A lot of sams were fired at us......

FALCON BMS: TO END A WAR (JOSEON)

Sit back and enjoy as I fly the final mission in what has been an exceptional campaign lasting only 5 days. Flying several different aircraft (Harrier, F-18 and the F-16) we were pushed to the very limits of our capabilities and at the start of the campaign things were looking rather bleak. Finally after continuous pursuit and persistence we slowly got the upper hand and our ground troops started to move up North.



A great campaign designed by Kaos using the Korea theatre creating an intense fight to the very end.

PATHS OF HATE

WATCH IT!

DIRT RALLY - AIRBOURNE (LANCIA STRATOS)

Not usually into rally driving but lately the bug has caught me.... I got a Lancia Stratos which is a very beastly power monster and I try to take it round Greece with some pace....



60,000 Lancia's were harmed in the making of this!



Sit back and enjoy.....

FALCON BMS: THE MIX TAPE "FIGHTING HARD"

I have been flying so many missions and not had time to edit all those recordings, so thought I would just put together some highlights of some of the flights I have been having with various pilots. Sit back and enjoy

FALCON BMS: FLYING BRIGHT

A chilled out relaxing flight where everything just went to plan. Taking to the skies again in Korea to maintain and air superiority in our target area.... We provide SEAD and air support for a strike package onroute to targets in the area.



Sit back and enjoy.....

FALCON BMS: HARRIERS VERSUS MIGS

Hi guys, another flight in the Korean Joseon campaign by Kaos. We are flying to take out strategic supply routes of the enemy whilst also removing a MIG airbase at Haeju. The strike is instantly held up by offensive MIG CAPS which prove to be a threat throughout the flight....

Sit back and enjoy.....

FALCON BMS: HARRIERS IN DEEP

Hi and welcome to another Falcon BMS video. Today Lorik and I fly deep into enemy territory to hunt for a straight flush then complete the mission with a DEAD on the SA-6 launchers. The mission soon proves to be way more difficult than the previously anticipated dangers we had prepped for.... sit back and enjoy this nail trimming mission! LORIK'S VERSION OF EVENTS: : https://youtu.be/oOKdUDUv9_w

FALCON BMS: HARRIERS STRIKE (JOSEON CAMPAIGN)

Mission on the first day of the campaign where we are running the front lines searching for a specific tank battalion. Sure enough we find it but its in-between SAMS and Bogeys...

*Hero of the day in my  opinion is Starfury for his Situational Awareness. He kept us up to date continuously whilst also processing 2 huge threats (SA10 ans SA6) and allowed us to do our job in a very tight and outnumbered situation....*

Sit back and enjoy

FALCON BMS: POLAR VORTEX

Flying suppression of enemy air defences is a hard enough job as it is but sometimes MIGS decide to join in the fun... Well this was just one of those days... Barely making it back with less fuel than an electric car this mission was very intense and comms heavy. Sit back and enjoy....

DCS: UH-1H HUEY DODGING THE ENEMY

Hi guys, taking a small break from Falcon BMS for a night I decide to "get to the choppa" and jump into DCS in my HUEY....

FALCON BMS: SCATTERED

Another Falcon BMS video. Multiplayer 4 ship, the first two jets are  SEAD and the tailing two jets are Strike on multiple targets deep deep into the enemy lair.....



Sit back and watch as we sweat it out

FALCON BMS: LOW LEVEL STRATEGIC STRIKE

Hi guys and welcome to another video. This is a multiplayer live 4 ship campaign strike mission.

2 jets provide SEAD on multiple surface to air threats whilst my wing man and I strike separate targets on the battlefield.

Sit back and enjoy....

St Patrick days sale. Games going for up to 95% off

Hi guys,


Just another quick post to say that there is a St Patrick days sale on today which is one not to let slip past.......


No affiliation, just saw it and wanted to share

Below is the link

https://uk.gamersgate.com/offers

Intel working on smart glasses? Doing a better job than Google?

Well I found this to be fascinating and personally I would like a set of smart glasses..... but the issue with smart glasses is ending up looking like Geordie of Star Trek, is not what people want.... they also don't want all of the intrusion which comes with Google glass......

Intel have been working on some technologies and have come up with this..... watch the video below...

I am pretty impressed! On the right course for sure....

Falcon BMS update 5 released...

Just spreading the word...

Falcon BMS 4.33 U5 has been released. The update consists of code changes mainly dealing with large multiplayer support. This release has no new features or changes with regard to graphics or models. It does have a lot of fresh code relating to networking and multiplayer.

This is good news and another step forward to 4.34.  The release has been off the feedback given with large multiplayer online campaigns from Falcon Online.....

You can download it from here:

https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?33218-Falcon-BMS-4-33-U5-Incremental-Installer

FALCON BMS: INTO THE NIGHT

A strike into enemy airspace where things get pretty complicated for our S.E.A.D one man protection.... The strike was a sucess but not the result we were looking for... sit back and enjoy another intense low level nap of the earth flight....

Air Traffic Controller after dinner speech

 If you have the time to watch this you will be laughing throughout....

A fantastic after dinner speech which just does not disappoint!

FALCON BMS: HARRIER LOW LEVEL RADAR STRIKE

A short video of me flying the AV8 Harrier. I have started a new campaign in Loriks Korea Theatre Yin Yang and fragged a Strike mission on a radar station in the mountains.

The Complete Falcon Collection for £3.50

Okay guys....

You have 15 hours from the time of this posting to pick up the deal....... This is the very best deal for price / gameplay you will ever get..... considering that you will end up playing this for YEARS....

Even if you don't.... £3.50..... Just do it!


Click the link below.....

http://retroism.com/falcon-collection/


P.S.... I have no affiliation to the above link..... I saw the deal and wanted to share....

Yeager Chuck 1991 MasterEdit

From an early age this man has been my hero... I read his autobiography when I was 13 and just found this man to be, what I considered the pinnacle of the human spirit. He has been there and done that on nearly everything ever related to flying and what didn't kill him, he looks back and laughs. Everything is right with  Chuck Yeager....

 If you ever get a chance to read his book... I promise, aviation nut or not, you will not be able to put it down!

The guy who invented rocker fuel dies age 107

https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/7uywvp/rocket_fuel_inventor_dies_aged_107/?utm_source=reddit-android

FALCON BMS: SUPPRESSION UNDER THE RADAR

Another low level ingress to target where I am flying in a 4 ship package. My job is to provide suppression of enemy air defenses whilst keeping my package safe from air threats and once SAMs have been cleared I am then to turn the mission into a destroy of enemy air defenses

Svetlana Kapanina - Sochi "Olympic Sky 2015"

FALCON BMS: INTO THE VALLEY

Sit back and enjoy another roller coaster of a mission deep into the lair.  Probably one of my favorite missions I have done in a while as it was extremely intense to fly.

Taken a screenshot from BMS over Bosnia....

Has to be one of my favourite screenshots I have taken in BMS...... I have edited only the lighting in GIMP and everything else is stock.... I hate when people say BMS is dated.......it's at the head of the simming world.... nothing comes close! Campaign/Physics/Community/Realism/ and actually modelled of NASA and real world data..... "Anyone mentions DCS will have a bucket of shit thrown at them"

Balkans- Egress from Operations in Bosnia

FALCON BMS: GREAT BALLS OF FIRE

Flying the F-16 in multiple missions all condensed into one easy to watch, chunk sized bite!

Another awesome flight with Kaos taking out a airbase from 23,000ft...

Working hard in Loriks Balkans Campaign.... manpad hell!