Techwaves: Videogames : Cultural niche occupied by kin of 'World of Warcraft'

Writing in Prospect (Nov13,2k9), Tom Chatfield remarks regarding videogames (he has a canon of these and a discriminating taste among the vidgames on offer these days:

I believe that World of Warcraft matters. Exactly how and why it matters, though, can be hard to get at from the outside; much of what reaches the mainstream media is a muddle of scandals, statistics and pseudo-scientific scraps. So I’d like to take a few moments to recall just what it was like to play this game for the first time five years ago, in the company of an old friend who had managed to wheedle both of our ways onto the game’s American servers in time for launch—and why, five years on, the character I created then is still soldiering on through the northern reaches of the world’s most famous unreal destination. ...

Technotes, by Technowlb

The gulf between those who do and don’t know what playing a video game is like is now one of the most telling cultural fractures around; and it’s thanks in large part to WoW that it’s no longer clear which is the more dignified side to be standing on.

Cultural Niching -- Arts, Sports & Games by Neetcha Meetcha

To me, somehow philosopher-engineer Hendrik van Riessen's The Society of the Future was prognosticating vaguely, phenoms like today's videogaming digital culture.

Arts: Genius: New theory of Adolf Hitler's personality and self-image as genius

Spiegel Online International, carries an interview with art historian Birgit Schwarz regarding her research on "why Adolf Hitler saw himself as a genius and how his obsession with art affected his political views."

Arts
& Romantic Theories of Genius,
by Artichokes

The renown Protestant philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd, also followed the 'genius' notion of European philosophy and letters that rose to become a cultural force thru-out the Romantic Era (cf. Vollenhoven on the concept of "zeitgeist" in the historiography of philosophy). Dooyeweerd's concept however is explicitly rooted in the idea of God's direct activity in giving the gift of creative genius to a mortal, whether he or she be Christian, Atheist, or adherent of another religion.

It seems that with D both a good genius and an evil genius, and much in between, are possible. Genius entails responsiblity. See: Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, II, last 10 pages.

Of course, Dooyeweerd opposed the National Socialist system of ideas (I believe D covers this zone also in volume II, NCTT, 1953-1957. When his job became officially defunct, the Free University (VU Amsterdam) where he was professor of law, being eventually closed down by the Nazi Occupation forces. Dooyeweerd lay low until the war was over, teaching secretly during the remaining war years a few graduate students weekly in his home.

Vollenhoven's zeitgeist parameter attempts to account for the macro-shifts in a culture whereby one "spirit of the age" gives way to the ascendancy and supersession of the oncoming spirit of the new age, however sour and dour, however exuberant and cheery. That so disparate a set of opposing views of life coud share a problem, its problematics, and come to vastly different trends of distinctive formulations, is structural but remaining distinctive in the process of Western philosophy. It's important to detail the pinpoint of similarity (in this case of comparison, the same zeitgeist carries along and renews/degenerates "creative genius" notions inherited from the Romantics) and the vast range of differences that pit the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea vs Hitler's National Socialism.

Toronto the Good: Transit costs for customers rise, no seniors discount?

 Yep,  if you're a Tortontonian or you're planning to come here to study, please be advised about public transportation under our Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), and the rise of 11% early in the New Year 2010.

Adult transit riders will need another quarter to ride the rocket starting Jan. 3.

Sic transit mundi, or some such.

Satire of Googlebooks by Mazurke, cartoon in Prospect {UK]

Hat Tip to cartoonist Mazurke and publisher Prospect {UK}

Segksetics: Stardumb: Levi Johnston shrugs wife and mother-in-law (repost)

"I just get naked. That's what I do."


But what about his kid, the 10 month old son in wife's care, him claiming he wants custody ... Levi's wife is Bristol Palin ...

Meanwhyld, the same Levi sets himself up as a h+pr+ce nude model who features for his photographers his own full-monty, mass-displayed in presumably a flacid-state in a forthcoming issue of the sex-picture mag, PlayGirl (just so his heterosegksuality is certified). US mag cawt up with the story and blasted a pleasant portrait of the shameless coxswain on its Celebrity News section (Oct26,2k9), plus the following text:

Get ready for more -- a lot more -- of Levi Johnston.
The hockey-playing dad to Sarah Palin's grandson, Johnston, 19, is ready for his Playgirl close-up. And while a date has yet to be set for his nude photo shoot, his manager Tank Jones told Usmagazine.com today, "it will be early November" in New York.

When did stars lose their virginity?
And Playgirl readers shouldn't expect many artfully placed pillows in the photos. Jones confirms to Us that full-frontal shots are planned for the shoot -- and that Bristol Palin's ex isn't nervous about exposing himself.

"He's pumped! He's ready to shock the world. The hell with fifteen minutes," Jones told Us over the phone. "As a matter of fact, when I picked him up, he came out the house naked. I said 'not now!'"

Johnston himself took the phone for a moment to chime in, telling Us: "I just get naked. That's what I do."

Hollywood sex scandals -- recap them here!
Like the up-in-the-air date, the theme of the shoot itself is also to-be-determined, Jones explained. "We're going to play it by ear. I'm going to make sure it's something he's comfortable with and tasteful. This is art."

And what of the New York Post's reports of a six-figure payday for the budding model? "This is not about money," Jones tells Us. "I don't remember how much it is. It's a little bread."
Johnston split with former fiance Bristol Palin, 19, in March 2009 -- two and a half months after the birth of their son, Tripp (now 10 months).

Check out the ugliest celeb splits
November will be a big month for Johnston's would-be mother-in-law:
Sarah Palin appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show Nov. 16 -- coinciding with the release of her autobiography,

Going Rogue: An American Life.

November  16 was yesterday, so I'll keep my eye on any TV news afterwords the book's release.

-- Politicarp

Sports: Basebal: National League picks best pitcher of season

San Fransisco's pitcher has won the National Baseball league's Cy Young award. The panel of judges of "the old school Baseball Writers Association of America" seems to have bawt into the position of fantasy baseball geeks:  "Wins are not the best judge of a pitcher's effectiveness."

Sports, by Sportikos

See USA Today's Steve Gardner's Fantasy Windup, an analysis of why Tim won against two worthy contenders, both Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright, both of the Saint Louis Cardinals.

Technics: Personal Computers: MicroSoft's dazzling "unified communications"

MicroSoft touts new unified communications:

One inbox. One interface.

Unified Communications technologies eliminates the separation between phones and computers. Email, voicemail, faxes, IM and calendar events all arrive in one place: the inbox. A single, familiar interface for PC, web or mobile devices makes it easy to use, no matter where you are. Suddenly, a video conference with real-time document sharing isn’t just possible – it’s less costly than collaboration by phone, not to mention taking a plane. When communication is faster and easier, productivity goes up and travel costs go down.

Technotes, by Technowlb

One unified communications platform

Microsoft Unified Communications solutions - Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 - don’t just make your people productive, they make you efficient. You can improve productivity while reducing the costs of communication systems by up to 50%. Instead of dealing with separate communication silos, you’re managing an integrated email, phone and conference system with built in protections that help increase security, compliance and availability. Communications work well, are cost effective, and are easy to manage, all within a common Windows-based infrastructure.

This new technical product fascinates me. I'm way below the learning curve on these matters, but I sure can tell how it's different for me technically at present, and in the techno-fantasy horizon MS (that my budget doesn't allow me to acquire).

-- Technowlb

Aharon Etengoff writng on security, "Rickrolling worm infects jailbroken iPhones" (Nov8,2k9) TG Daily "The Tech Generation" intrigues me with unheard-before terms indigenous to the subculture of what used to be telephony, since become wireless telephony, now become smart-phonery, in process of becoming apps hub tech (on handheld devices, in large part).

A number of iPhones in Australia have reportedly been infected by a worm that replaces the background wallpaper (face of the handheld) with an image of 80's pop icon Rick Astley.

"The worm, which could have [already] spread to other countries although we have no confirmed reports outside Australia, is capable of breaking into jailbroken iPhones if their owners have not changed the default password after installing SSH," explained Sophos security researcher Graham Cluley. "Once in place, the worm appears to attempt to find other iPhones on the mobile phone network that are similarly vulnerable and installs itself again."

Thus, the metaphor "jailbroken" adjectivally refers to an iPhone in a certain technical condidtion where owners have not changed the defaut password after installing [ssh, Secure Shell ].

Technotes, by Technowlb

"The worm will not affect users who have not jailbroken their iPhones or who have not installed SSH," said Cluley. "What's clear is that if you have jailbroken your iPhone or iPod Touch, and installed SSH, then you must always change your root user password to something different than the default 'alpine.'"

Tech: Consumer/Corporate relations: Bell Telephone, Bell Express VU TV, Bell Internet

I am so disgusted with Bell Canada from which I receive three services -- Phone (Bell Telephone), TV (Bell Express Vu satellite service), and Internet (Bell Internet to which I have been forcibly shifted from the previous email arrangements I had under Sympatico.ca). The conplexity of using these Bell services and their products has risen exponentially, degrading their previous relative value in the new intrusive and clogging arrangements which are operated as they are, under the go--ahead by the Tory time-serving bureaucrats and technocrat economists of the Canadian Radio and Television Commission. Telephony is bundled within the group's mandate.

Also, I must deal with the outsourcing of direct service to a corporation callback centre in India. As a result, the phone help for the Internet service has fallen considerably, not least of all linguistically and in regard to cultural reference. This outsourcing saves Bell Canada money, reduces the quality of service to English-speaking consumers who use the Ontario idiom for this language, and leaves the Ontario customer permanently dissatisfied.

Furthermoere, I've been more or less required to shift over from Apple applications, especially Mail.app, to the disservices called MicroSoft and its hideous Hotmail, and as a satellite to the foregoing Bell's version of so-called Bell Mail, an online gerryrigging that at present takes me nowhere.

The CRTC, presently in the hands of the Conservative Party's minority federal govt of Stephen Harper, is corrupt in its treatment of Bell customers. To my mind, this cozy relation between govt /CRTC and Bell is to the hurt of consumers, especially ordinary users and seniors like myself who are abused severely by the over-complexity of all the Bell technical "services." This horrid setup is the combined answer of govt and the tech company/ies involved, to the needs of seniors cawt in the technological crunch that is haunting my generation.

Principium Consumers Hub

It seems to me it's time to revive rW's previous regular column on consumer goods and services, g & s that so often runs amok wreaking mayhem, against the modest requirements of lower-income pensioners of older years who are systematically toyed with by these privileged financial blood-sucking corporations like Bell, at the connivance of CRTC and the Harper Conservatives which placate the greed-corporations. I need the services, not least the the convenience of Bell's 1-bill for all the three main services (there are more, like cell phonage which I don't have and don't covet), these "services" and their products do not make up for the greed-driven overcomplicated racket that is Bell Canada in Ontario.

There's one competitor remaining in Toronto (that I know of): Rogers Cable TV, phone, and Internet service. That being a clone of Bell except for TV (Bell is satellite-based, Rogers is cable-based and I guess those cable are actually Bell fibre-optics lines, actually; so, I have no real competitive option. Likewise, the Conservatives have no real competition -- the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois are worse than the Tories, I presently think. The Conservs has the elderly ub a corner, and do not regulate Bell to make things technical plain, workable directly, and cheap.

Technotes, by Technowlb

No competition in case 1. No competition in case 2. So, again there's no remedy whereby an inner reformation of the CRTC m+t occur under Conserv provenance. And my increasingly tech- determined lifetime.