Phyrfight Intel

The Federal government keeps chipping away at freedoms we have taken for granted for decades. In the post 9/11 hysteria bureaucrats everywhere are pushing for more government control over the most innocuous parts of everyday life. Probably because that’s all they know how to do, make rules and punish those that don’t follow them. The biggest problem with that is that the Jihadists are rarely around to punish after the fact.

It’s the minorities that have to give up their freedoms first because there is no one to fight for them. I’m not talking just race here, I mean any minority. I’m a general aviation pilot and our freedoms have been under constant attack since 9/11. If you are not a pilot you wont understand and you don’t care, but you should care because each bit of freedom belongs to everyone and once its gone you wont get it back. Think of every little encroachment on someone else’s freedoms as setting a precedent for the day that the government wants to take away your freedoms.

This is from the AOPA. ADIZ stands for Air Defense Identification Zone.

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NO ADIZ IN YOUR BACKYARD? DON’T BET ON IT…
Imagine this: Every time you want to fly, you have to file a flight
plan. Before you can take off, you have to get a transponder code,
but the landline you call to get it is busy most of the time. If
there is an RCO (remote communications outlet) frequency for your
airport, you can rarely get a timely response from an overworked
controller. Services are falling off at your local FBO because
business is down drastically. In fact, some of your favorite places
on the field have already closed. Welcome to life in an air defense
identification zone (ADIZ). Can’t happen in your area? Don’t bet on
it. At this moment, New York City has a “temporary” ADIZ. Chicago’s
Mayor Richard Daley keeps pushing for one of his own. Any of the
other Class B airspace areas across the country could become an ADIZ
at a moment’s notice. That’s what happened in Washington, D.C.–where
the “temporary” ADIZ was created on a weekend in response to a
heightened national threat level. But after the threat level was
reduced, the ADIZ remained. Now the FAA wants to make it permanent,
and the same thing could happen anywhere. “That’s why AOPA continues
to fight so hard against the Washington ADIZ,” said AOPA President
Phil Boyer. “And why–very soon–we will be asking all AOPA members
to join the fight. We must work together to prevent an ADIZ in your
backyard.” Stay tuned. See AOPA Online

In case you don’t follow gaming news religiouly, as I do, I’m going to bring you up to speed on how Nintendo has been pushing their next-gen platform, codenamed “Revolution.” They say that they don’t want to be part of the console war that Sony and Microsoft are in. They want to be unique and have innovative gameplay. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Innovation is great. However, one thing that Nintendo claimed to be their show-stopper at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) in May, is the controller for the new system. They wouldn’t say how, nor show anyone what the controller looked like.

Well, the Tokyo Game Show is happening as this is being written and Nintendo has just revealed their “amazing” new controller.

Ta Dah!!

I’m sorry if you disagree, but I think that is the dumbest thing that I have ever seen!! Nintendo wanted a revolution, but I think they got stuck half way around and ended up going backwards. The company has successfully ruled out ANY third-party support for their console because it is just going to be too damn hard to control the games. It’s just a glorified, wireless NES controller for God’s sake!

Now to their credit, it does have certain functionality in which the player can point the controller at the screen and the game responds accordingly. In one demo the player actually turned the controller sideways and held it like a model plane, using the tilt of the controller to steer a plane on screen. But can a franchise be built off of a novelty item?

As far as I am concerned, Nintendo got what they wanted. They are nowhere near Sony and Microsoft. They’ve gone the way of Apple and created a perfectly impracticle yet expensive device that their niche consumers will eat up with a spoon while most people pass without a second thought. One IGN editor put it best when he simply stated, “I’m not playing Legend of Zelda on that.”