tollie.org/blog thoughts and reflections of Tollie Williams

Yet again, (c) law and the DMCA are the tools of un-constitutional censorship.

RSSCloud is an element that's always been present in the RSS 2.0 spec but has drawn new attention with the rise of interest in the Real-Time Web. The element was just added to the WordPress code this afternoon. The implications of this big vote of support go beyond reading WordPress blogs; this is the kind of traction that new technologies can leverage to gain support in many different applications.

Supporting feed readers will now be able to request updates from WordPress blog feeds as soon as they become available, instead of polling a server periodically to check for updates.

Could pushing people to exercise more actually be contributing to our obesity problem? In some respects, yes. Because exercise depletes not just the body's muscles but the brain's self-control "muscle" as well, many of us will feel greater entitlement to eat a bag of chips during that lazy time after we get back from the gym. This explains why exercise could make you heavier — or at least why even my wretched four hours of exercise a week aren't eliminating all my fat. It's likely that I am more sedentary during my nonexercise hours than I would be if I didn't exercise with such Puritan fury. If I exercised less, I might feel like walking more instead of hopping into a cab; I might have enough energy to shop for food, cook and then clean instead of ordering a satisfyingly greasy burrito.

New Flickr search.

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.

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.

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.

Fix: make sure ethernet isn't disabled.

Twitter might be CNDing this site, but I don't know. I like some of its features though.

Among other things - removes the "Podcast" flag from files so they'll show up in the regular library. (PS. Weird things happen when you have a ringtone with the "podcast" flag set, so it's best to unflag them.)

From the "What On EARTH" were they thinking department... They asked not just for your social network usernames (acceptable, IMHO), but your PASSWORDS to log in? A) What idiot thought this was reasonable? B) What idiots gave them their passwords?

This could have some free-speech implications. Also, "Because it's new " -- *NEW*? Credit for that quote, calling affiliate links new, goes to Rich Cleland, assistant director in the FTC's division of advertising practices. Way to be in touch RIch...

EXCERPT: Existing FTC rules already ban deceptive and unfair business practices. The proposed guidelines aim to clarify the law and for the first time specifically include bloggers, defined loosely as anyone writing a personal journal online.

"It's sort of a recognition that word-of-mouth marketing in whatever form, whether electronic or not, is a significant part of the marketing strategy of modern companies," Cleland said. "Because it's new, I think it is imperative that we provide some kind of guidance."

If approved, bloggers would have to back up claims and disclose if they're being compensated - the FTC doesn't currently plan to specify how.

Any type of blog could be scrutinized, not just ones that specialize in reviews.

After formatting and reinstalling OS X (the key chains were behaving weird, and it was time) I realized that I had forgot to backup *one* thing -- my "Perfect EQ" for iTunes. Much to my surprise, it's still the #1 Google result after almost 5 years. Of course, there's no true "perfect" EQ - I know that, and I also know that EQ's are intended to be tuned per the speakers, the room, and the music itself - however, give this EQ a try. To me, it sounds fuller and pulls out the words - kind of like an open air concert stage. YMMV.

ASCAP (the same folks who went after Girl Scouts for singing around a campfire) appears to believe that every time your musical ringtone rings in public, you're violating copyright law by "publicly performing" it without a license.

ASCAP's outlandish claim is part of its battle with major mobile carriers (including Verizon and AT&T) over whether ASCAP is owed any money for "public performances" of the musical ringtones sold by the carriers. The carriers point out that the owners of the musical compositions (i.e., songwriters and music publishers) are already paid for each ringtone download, but ASCAP claims that it's owed another royalty for the "public performances" (i.e., ringing in a restaurant) of those same ringtones.

1. Twitter Is a Tool and Thus Difficult to Censor
shutting down Twitter.com does little to stop the offending Twittering. You’d have to shut down the entire service, which is done occasionally for maintenance.

2. Tweets Are Generally Banal, but Watch Out

Each update may not be important. Collectively, however, the tweets can create a personality or environment that reflects the emotions of the moment and helps drive opinion.

3. Buyer Beware

Nothing on Twitter has been verified.

4. Watch Your Back

Some Twitterers may even be trying to trick you.

5. Twitter Is Self-Correcting but a Misleading Gauge

For all the democratic traits of Twitter, not all users are equal. A popular, trusted user matters more. In that way, Twitter is a community, with leaders and cliques.

6. Twitter Can Be a Potent Tool for Media Criticism

Just as Twitter can rally protesters against governments, its broadcast ability can rally them quickly and efficiently against news outlets.

camera shoots 3-megapixel stills, and thus could be commanded to shoot 720p video--it's got more than enough pixels to spare, and the speedier 600MHz processor in the phone should be easily capable of the increased bandwidth required by 720p video. Why has Apple chosen to limit it to VGA resolution? It seems a slightly odd move, given that there are smartphones out there that shoot still imagery at 12-megapixels and can do full HD video.

The answer is a mystery, but we can guess one probable cause. It's the same reason why the 3G S's new processor, which is capable of 833MHz speeds, is choked down to just 600MHz: Battery life.