tollie.org/blog thoughts and reflections of Tollie Williams

links for 2009-07-09

• Cyclist body slammed by NYPD cop sues for $1.5 million
  Take the case of Christopher Long who was participating in a Critical Mass bicycle ride through Times Square last summer. The then-29-year-old New Jersey native doesn’t appear to have ever have stepped into a weight room or a courtroom.

  It is safe to say that the last thing on his mind that day was that he would be body slammed by a New York City Police Officer, then thrown in jail for 26 hours on charges of assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

  Then there is Patrick Pogan, the NYPD officer in question. He was 22 years old at the time and had been on the force all of three weeks. As a third-generation NYPD cop, Pogan knew he had a lot of power with that badge. And the former high school football player wasn’t going to waste any time to use it.

  It is safe to say that the last thing he expected was for someone to be filming the exact spot where he chose to body-slam Long for no apparent reason before conjuring false charges against him.

  (tags: news articles police government power abuse legal accountability)
• ATT is still the worst part of the iPhone - limited to 384 Kbps upstream
  a teardown at RapidRepair of an iPhone 3GS shows that it has a UMTS/HSDPA chip. UMTS is the earliest 3G standard deployed on GSM networks, and it tops out at 384 Kbps. It’s easy to test, if you have an iPhone 3GS. Go to any speed tester, like Testmyiphone when you’re outdoors with a good signal. Downstream, you might hit well over 1 Mbps; upstream, under 384 Kbps.

  Dunklee examined the specs on a number of GSM network smartphones, and found none included HSUPA. It’s possible that there could be a firmware update from UMTS to HSUPA, but that’s unlikely. There’s usually a reason for using an older standard, which is related to power consumption, chip size, or cost.

  In contrast, Dunklee noted, phones that handle EVDO Rev. A—the 3G standard used on CDMA networks like those operated by Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless—have the full high-data-rate upload speed.

  (tags: tech news articles apple iphone bandwidth speeds at&t verizon sprint cell)
• FT.com / Comment / Opinion - Copyright laws threaten our online freedom
  If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not “ours” at all.

  On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.

  This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored.

  Where technology opens up possibilities intellectual property laws do their best to restrict them. Linux is held back by patents copyright.

  (tags: news articles civil liberties rights freedom copyright culture digital law filesharing government issues tech)