Spanish filmmaker Diego Barrera uses Christian symbolism and New Age crystals to mount a mystical vision trip the takes inspiration from the film works of Alejandro Jodorowski. I believe it is a music video for a group called ‘Mater Susperia Vision.’
Tag Archives: Apple
Alice In Wonderland For iPad
I’ve got lots of grumps against Apple’s iPad, like the lack of support for Flash, one of the greatest web technologies in existence. But this Alice in Wonderland eBook looks fantastic. I’d love to make all the pictures move around and I think kids will too. This must be right because when I was a kid I fervently wished for every illustration to wake up and start moving.
Apple Declares War on Free Web Content
It’s hit me what I really can’t stand about the new Apple iPad. It’s been mentioned by most of the reviews of this new tablet device, but I don’t think people are really getting the scope of what Apple is up to. The iPad, like the iPhone and iPod Touch before it, does not support Flash. You know, Flash, perhaps the single greatest technical innovation on the Web since the invention of the Web itself. Flash is what brought us nearly universal moving images on the Internet. Flash brought us YouTube. Flash has created almost every single good game you have ever played in your browser. Flash is responsible for the greatest explosion of animation talent in the history of the art form. There is not another single piece of browser software that has brought so much to the web browsing experience as the little Flash player that’s installed on nearly every computer on the planet. Here’s a blog entry by one of the Adobe Photoshop developers that explains why Flash is so great.
But Apple does not allow Flash on its iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone. Won’t allow it to run. That’s why you get a broken plugin icon whenever you encounter a web page with Flash in it. The company says silly things about Flash being too slow, or Flash hogging CPU cycles. Complete horse radish. Apple doesn’t want you to have Flash because Apple wants you to buy apps in its App Store instead. That’s what this is all about.
So, essentially, Apple is fighting for a closed and walled-up Internet where all your cool moving images and games come straight out of their App Store and nowhere else. When you behave this way with a small-screened device like an iPhone or iPod Touch it’s one thing. But when you blow the whole thing up onto a big fat glorious iPad screen it’s another thing entirely. Now it really shows up as a flagrant attempt to disable every creative piece of Web work that any artist, animator, filmmaker or game designer has ever done and force people to accept your little library of 140,000 little applications, most of which cost good money.
Try visiting this web site on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. See all our games and movies in the drop-down menus? Not a single one will work. Not one. Because of dear old super-genius Steve Jobs. Mr. Dingbat gets up in front of reporters at the public iPad unveiling and says idiotic things about having ‘the Web in your hands.’ He presents his new iPad device as a Web browser. It can’t be a Web browser if it disables half the Web. It simply defies logic.
This is really all anyone should need to know about Apple and its devices. They are building little cash registers that limit your view of the Web and lead you to one final destination: the App Store. They are trying to make you pay for the World Wide Web. Great technology. Very dark plan. I’m on Flash’s side. Go Flash! Apple, you suck.
I Take it Back: Apple Tablet is Dopey
So after all the hoopla the Apple company has decided that it’s a good idea to sell an iPod Touch that you can’t carry.
The just-announced iPad is big, with a fullscreen display instead of widescreen, has no camera, and cannot multi-task. So only one application at a time will run. The fullscreen thing may make sense when you consider that people will need to be typing on a virtual keyboard, but I’m not sure that it will fly. I see it as going out to buy a fullscreen monitor somehow.
I think I’m finally ready to go get myself a Kindle from Amazon!
I’ve been yawning all morning and I’m still yawning.
Apple About to Announce Extraordinary New Tablet Device
Apple really could be preparing to announce something pretty extraordinary for content publishing, creation and consumption today. Its widely rumored tablet device will very likely put most other ebook reader devices out of business simply because the Apple product will be a real computer, useful for reading and for creating. It will most likely build a seamless content-creation universe that ties directly to online sales platforms. It will be a ‘publishing’ tablet really. Not just an e-book device.
Wired is covering the Apple press conference event all day with blog entries.
I have not purchased any kind of an e-reader device, in spite of the hysteria surrounding them, specifically because of Apple’s plans. There is no way under the sun that anyone else is going to compare favorably to what Apple is about to drop on us today.
Apple is a Nightmare of Censorship
Look at the image to the left. If that image disturbs you to the point of banning the comic book, you are unintelligent. No doubt about it. It disturbs Apple so much that they’ve removed the comic book from their App Store. Clear censorship. The comic book is by author Cory Doctorow who has written many fiction and non-fiction books. Most of his work supports open source creativity and remix culture. I suspect that there’s more to Apple’s censorship of this work than meets the eye. Apple hates open source stuff. They lock down their products like nobody’s business. They even think it’s illegal for you to make your own applications to load onto your own iPhone or iPod Touch.
Recent events at Apple and Amazon paint a disturbing picture of what is going on with these technology-based companies as they try to handle creative content. It seems that the more efficiently a company designs and builds technology, the more interested they become in controlling and censoring content. This is the fundamental core of fascism. It is a very dangerous idea to give control of publishing and content to these companies. It must not be allowed to happen. They do not care one whit about freedom of expression.
What has become very obvious over the past year to any discerning observer is that Apple is a far right-wing conservative organization with truly frightening ideas of what content should be made available on a publishing platform. Censoring the image of the Ork getting his head chopped off in a comic book is just what I would expect from an Islamic fundamentalist group or a right-wing Christian organization. If the Taliban opened their own app store, I doubt they would publish an application that features a bikini-clad female chopping Muhammad’s head off.
So here it is – for all intents and purposes as far as creative expression is concerned: Apple = Taliban.
I think Apple has some very smart engineers and designers working for it, but is burdened with a high-functioning nitwit at its helm: Steve Jobs. We hear a lot about how smart this fellow is, but he appears to be about as clever as your average car salesman. Apple needs to dump this guy quickly and figure out how to run itself as a content distributor because Mr. Jobs is not up to the job.
In the 21st Century you don’t run around censoring creative work in the United States of America. You do that in China, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Singapore, Burma, etc.
I would suggest Mr. Jobs apply for a job in one of these places. They would simply love to have him.