What is Philosophy and why should I care? October 3, 2007
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Philosophy is about things that we already know - truth, knowledge, goodness, beauty, reality, reason, life, death, and more. It’s all about the things that are already there. It’s like the furniture that we have, the computer that we use and the car that we drive. So, if it’s the study of things that are already there, why should I care about it?
Using the furniture as an example, do you know what kind of wood was used and how much does it cost? How about your computer? What OS are you using and can you manipulate it or does it manipulate you? What is the make of your car? What’s the mileage and when is the last time you had it tuned-up? Do we ask these questions or we just use these ordinary things around us without any care? If we ask these questions, we could look at this ordinary things in a different way, we could appreciate these ordinary things better than the “ordinary man” that only use these things.
Thru Philosophy, we could look at these realities in a different perspective. We could accept death better than someone who did not study the realities of life. We could appreciate the real meaning of beauty because as students of Philosophy we have known what its absence means.
“It is by studying Philosophy, in a clear, step-by-step way, and by profiting from the thought of the great philosophers of the past, that one gains real insight” about the things that we thought we already know about.
from Soren Kierkegaard’s Diary of the Seducer October 3, 2007
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My Cordelia!
In old tales we can read that a river fell in love with a girl. Thus is my soul like a river, which loves you. Sometimes it is tranquil and lets your image mirror itself deep and unmoved in it, sometimes it has the illusion of having caught your image, then its wave curls in order prevent you from escaping again; sometimes it softly curls its surface and plays with your image, sometimes it has lost it, then will its wave become black and despairing. So is my soul; like a river that has fallen in love with you.
Your Johannes
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Each man has a seducer within, once a woman is conquered there is a tendency for men to lose their interest in the subject.
Johannes in the Diary of the Seducer lured the woman into his embarce using many twisted and manipulative ways, having given herself fully, he then lose interest in her. After mentally manipulating her, he then made her think that it was her that broke the relationship. Manipulating her till the end…
Go Play: Nokia unveils four devices August 30, 2007
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Alongside the introduction of Ovi, the door to Nokia’s new Internet services, Nokia unveiled four new mobile devices specifically optimized for entertainment, music and games. Each device offers dedicated music or gaming keys, expanded memory, large screens and extended battery performance to provide quick and easy access to entertainment content.
“From the compact Nokia 5310 XpressMusic music phone to the fully-featured Nokia N81 multimedia computer, Nokia offers a range of entertainment-enabled devices for consumers who want their music, games and favourite media with them wherever they go,” says Kai Oistamo, Executive Vice President, Nokia. “We believe these full-featured, well-designed devices will be very popular and will help bring Nokia’s Internet and music services to life.”
Nokia N81 and Nokia N81 8GB: Entertainment made simple
With dedicated music and gaming keys, 3.5 mm headphone connector and 3G and WLAN connectivity, the Nokia N81 multimedia computer is a true mobile entertainment powerhouse. With a sleek, polished surface and keys that light up when you activate them, accessing content on the 3D multimedia menu is fast and intuitive. Equally impressive, the Nokia N81 is configured to find, buy, manage and play music and games purchased from the Nokia Music Store and N-Gage games service. The estimated retail price of the Nokia N81 is 360 EUR before subsidies or taxes. The Nokia N81 8GB is expected to retail for 430 EUR before subsidies or taxes. Both versions are expected to begin shipping in the fourth quarter of 2007.
Nokia N95 8GB: Stunning screen, massive memory
The Nokia N95, the world’s greatest multimedia computer, just got greater. With all the key features of its predecessor, including a 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, built-in A-GPS, WLAN, HSDPA and an innovative 2-way slide, the Nokia N95 8GB now offers up to eight gigabytes of built-in memory. The N95 8GB also boasts a new luminous 2.8″ QVGA display - one of the largest ever for a multimedia computer - so that watching videos, browsing the Internet or viewing maps is easy. With its expanded memory, the N95 8GB offers up to 20 hours of video* or up to 6000 songs**. The N95 8GB multimedia computer is expected to begin shipping in the fourth quarter of 2007 with an estimated retail price of EUR 560 before subsidies or taxes.
Nokia 5310 XpressMusic - Small in size, big on music
With a sleek aluminium finish, the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic phone blends an array of features with an iconic design. At only 9.9mm thick and weighing less than 71 grams, the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic fits comfortably in a pocket or purse. Equally important, the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic offers up to 18 hours of music playback, memory for up to 3,000 songs** on an optional 4GB microSD card and dedicated music keys. With a 2-megapixel camera and a bright 2-inch QVGA screen with up to 16 million colors, the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic is expected to begin shipping in the fourth quarter of 2007 with an estimated retail price of 225 EUR before taxes and subsidies.
Nokia 5610 XpressMusic - Edgy design, sharp sound
The Nokia 5610 XpressMusic comes ready to rock with an iconic Music Slider key making music easy to access with a flick of the thumb. Aluminum side panels accent the all-black high gloss finish and large 2.2-inch, 16 million color display of the Nokia 5610 XpressMusic. The Nokia 5610 XpressMusic offers crystal clear sound and up to 22 hours of music playback and memory with capacity for 3,000 songs on an optional 4GB microSD card**. More than just a phone and music player, the Nokia 5610 XpressMusic features a high-quality 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and dual LED flash. The Nokia 5610 XpressMusic uses 3G technology, making downloads, web-browsing and video calls faster and easier. The Nokia 5610 XpressMusic is expected to begin shipping in the fourth quarter of 2007 with an estimated retail price of EUR 300 before taxes and subsidies.
Both Nokia XpressMusic handsets are compatible with the recently launched Nokia Music Store, offering consumers a wide music selection to be downloaded via PC.
Source: Nokia
Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind August 29, 2007
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The “Phenomenology of Mind” is a study of appearances, images and illusions throughout the history of human consciousness. In this book Hegel showed the evolution of consciousness and presented a process by which one may attain to understand the absolute truth.
Hegel believed that consciousness starts with “natural consciousness”, anything learned through this consciousness “will prove to be knowledge only in conception, not in reality”. “Natural consciousness” is very frail and dangerous as the kind of knowledge out of this consciousness is often refuted and proved wrong. There are two reactions that a person could do when his assumptions are proven wrong. One, he could attempt to find an objective truth or two, sink down into apathy, subjectivism and nihilism.
If you were confronted with these two choices, which one would you take?
New goodies in the Technews Lab July 19, 2007
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We have new laptops, desktops, mp3 players, printers, A/V equipment and a lot more, but still the star of the Lab for more than two weeks now is still the iPhone. It never failed to elicit a “WOW” from the people to whom I have shown it. But being the gadgets section of the newspaper, Technews should not revolve just around a phone that could not even make a phone call YET. So whether I like it or not, the iPhone that I am using now is on its way to its original packaging and off it will go to one of our shelves beside the PS3 and Wii. The next phone that I would be using for the coming week is a prototype. It’s a gaming phone that could play gameboy and DS games. It has a 100MB memory and supports micro SD memory card. It is also an personal multimedia system. MB’s source abroad requested Technews to try it and give them some comments about the product.
Below are some of the latest gadgets in the Technews Lab.
Mobile TV
The Ask TV phone from China is a PDA phone with FM radio, camera, video recorder, video player, audio player and Analog TV. Like the TVs of old, it gets its signal over the air meaning you could watch your favorite tele novelas and programs for FREE.
Sony Walkman Video
The Sony NW-A800 measures 8.8 x 4.4cm, just 9mm thick and weighs 53g. The 2-inch QVGA (320×240) TFT LCD offers high resolution and high contrast - capable of playback of high quality still images and videos.
GigaJuke
Just introduced May of this year the NAS-50HDE aka Gigajuke is for music fanatics with large music collection. The GigaJuke simplifies storage of your music collection without the need for a PC. It stores, labels, and organizes music in its 80GB internal hard drive. The device can transfer music directly to the WALKMAN or other portable audio players including the latest Sony Ericsson phones without the help of a PC.
JVC-HD GZ-HD7
Claimed by JVC to be the first consumer full High-Definition 3-CCD camcorder capable of shooting and recording full HD images (1920 x 1080i). Released on April 2007, this camcorder features a Fujinon lens used in broadcast video cameras.
Nokia 6120
“Surf the web and download quickly over the high speed 3G or HSDAP connection. Take photos with flash and panorama imaging with its 2-megapixel camera and keep on top of your busy life by sending or recieing email with attachements.” These are the few things that the new Nokia 6120 is offering the consumers. There is no price yet as of press time but my source abroad said that it is very affordable compared to other phones with similar features.
And many more… two more boxes of goodies to go.
iPhone… what do you think? July 18, 2007
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So much have been said about the iPhone that Technews decided to forego the technical review and instead go around and get the opinion of the people on what they can say about this gadget.
Being one of the firsts in the Philippines to have this much coveted phone, I was both proud and frustrated when I received it from our source abroad. Proud because Technews has done it again, we are the first media organization in the Philippines to have an iPhone, while others are talking about it, Manila Bulletin is playing with it. And, while others are quoting sources about how brilliant the screen is, here we are smudging the brilliant screen with our sweaty fingers. Only one thing has dampen my enthusiasm about the phone — I could not use it as a phone… YET.
As what I have said in my column, the iPhone looks cool, the screen is one block of touch sensitive glass and it fits perfectly in the palm of my hand. What’s good about this phone is the interface that even my 10 year old son and my 68 year old mother could easily operate it. The iPhone has dented button in front that serves as a escape key that brings you back to the main menu, this means that non-techie users would never get lost while using the phone.
Connecting the iPhone to the wifi network is a easy, you can do it with just three clicks. Once you are connected, you can then check the weather, view maps, enjoy youtube and surf the web. The Web browser of the iPhone gives you a full web layout. You can scroll with your fingertip, double-tap to enlarge a portion for easier reading and viewing and flip the the screen 90 degrees, and the web page you are viewing also rotates and magnifies to fill the landscape view. Finally, you can magnify a Web page by spreading your thumb and forefinger on the glass. The image grows as if a rubber being stretched.
The iPhone is also a real iPod, I am even using the charger of my iPod Nano to charge it. The USB cable, the power plug for the charger and the earphone remained untouch in the box of the iPhone as I am using all my iPod’s accessories for the iPhone. And like an iPod it downloads music, video and photos from your PC while charging.
After about two weeks inside my pocket and without any protection the touch sensitive screen of the iPhone remains scratchless.
Here are some of the comments about the iPhone:
Annalyn Jusay (www.annalyn.net), Technews Columnist:
“It’s ahhhhmazing! …Built-in iPod! We just have to believe Steve Jobs when he says this is “the best iPod ever made.”
Sally Caballero, Ph.D. Managing Director, Net Ship Management Inc.
“Wow, it’s so nice. It would have been better if it’s smaller”
Rosamay Daniel, Net Ship Management
“The phone looks great!”
Therese Camit, Lifestyle Writer
“Wow! Astig, malaki pala to?, kelan kaya ako magkakaron nito?”
Russel Torres, Artist
&%@#… hayop! I love it.
Menchu Ambrosio,
Galing naman, nakakatuwa pag pinipindot yong letter lumalaki sya. It’s like magic.
Anthony Gallano, Company Driver
Maganda Pu$%^@! hi-tech
Diony Dionisio, Security Guard
Ano to?
Circulation Department Staff of Manila Bulletin
Ohhhhh! Wow… (upon double tapping a photo to magnify it)
Ivy Liza Mendoza
Kakainis ang ganda.
Willie Caballes, Asst. Sports Editor
Attractive! It doesn’t look like a cellphone. The features are very easy to use.
Robert Roque, Editor, Tempo
Can I give you a check? Pay to cash… ngayon din. This is the total phone.
Nida, Sidewalk vendor
Ay baka makuryente ako!
Photos are in my mobile blog at http:// artsamaniego.blogspot.com
Never judge anybody based on what you hear July 14, 2007
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I have heard a lot about Mark Jimenez in the past thru TV, radio and newspaper. Just recently, I had come face to face with the man when I bumped into a friend in the lobby of one of the hotels in Makati. I was there for an event, and Mr. Jimenez was with my friend for a meeting. We were introduce and I admit I was really uncomfortable because we have nothing in common to break the ice. Expecting just a “HI”, “HELLO” and “GOODBYE” I respectfully smiled and was about to excuse myself out when my friend said that Mr. Jimenez is into the computer business. To cut the conversation short without being obviously blunt, I asked Mr. Jimenez his insight about the IT business in the Philippines and his idea on how to succeed in this cut-throat industry. I did not expect to get a significant answer but I was dead wrong, with a smile as if he knows that I was testing him he said: “In the technology business, price of hardware is always decreasing while the capacity and features are always increasing. Everything in the middle does not matter. Having good insight on the market dynamics helps you make the right decision. Time to market, sweet spot pricing, effective channel and constant innovation are some of the key ingredients of success.” It felt like a punch on my face. My impression about the man was totally wrong.
Later I learned from my friend that as a young boy, Mr. Jimenez would pilfer some goods from his parents’ stockroom to give to the needy children in the area. There was even a time when he was nabbed by law enforcers, because he had a bag of food which the cop thought that he had stolen, when the cop checked his story the maids promptly identified him as the child of their employer haha.
I have learned two important lessons with the accidental meeting with Mark Jimenez, never again would I judge a man based on what I read or heard from other people and never again would I think that I am better than anybody else. And I was also wrong, we have indeed something in common, we were both ex-seminarians :).
The Nokia E90 July 12, 2007
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Just launched yesterday in the Philippines, the Nokia E90 is a premium business mobile device with high speed mobile broadband and integrated mobile office. It could browse the Internet and transfer media rich file via HSDPA — that’s up to 3.6 Megabits per second. It’s a quadband GSM meaning users could go virtually anywhere in the Globe and still use this phone.
I can now say goodbye to my old but reliable Nokia E61 :).
Mobile Blogging July 12, 2007
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A mobile blog, is an online record of anything you would like to post online, contents that you would like to share with the rest of the world. The difference between mobile blogging and regular blogging is that you use your phone to post text and/or pictures. You don’t need to have a PC to mobile blog. Whenever and wherever you feel like posting a picture, all you need to do is shoot and send.
My phone has the capability to mobile blog, it has an editor that allows me to take pictures and put some texts, it’s like creating an MMS message. With a phone like this, you too can start your own mobile blog, after taking a picture, just choose “Blog this” from the MORE option of your phone. You can then post your photos for the rest of the world to see.
more on my iPhone July 8, 2007
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Thanks for the emails and phone calls…
1) I got the iPhone from our source in HK, it was sitting on my desk since July 3 but I only got the chance to open it last Saturday July 7.
2) What I have is the 8G model and I got it for less than the published rate.
3) Everything has been activated except for the phone functionality. The iTunes is quite impressive. I am still waiting for my postpaid AT&T account to be activated and will see if it could roam.
4) Technews was informed that PowerMac center would bring into the country the iPhone this month.
5) Aside from the iPhone, Technews Lab has now the wrist phone, the newest version of the phone with analog TV, latest Samsung, Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones, mp3 and mp4 players, HTC and Dopod phones and loads of goodies from China ;).
6) The SIM Card of the iPhone could be removed using a paper clip.
