the access can be used to steal personal information, attack networks, and even set printers on fire by feeding them a continuous stream of instructions designed to heat them up. ... such an attack "can be sent though several vectors, the USB connection [from a printer to a computer] is one of them. "
Sounds like a Windows problem but Windows is not mentioned. Instead HP sent some FUD about gnu/linux and OSX sending corrupted print jobs to do the same thing. Ars could do better with technical details.
Tyler Lyle, 26, who was arrested for blocking a sidewalk, says he sat on a parked bus for at least five hours. During that time, numerous protesters called out to a deputy to complain their hands were turning purple due to too-tight handcuffs. The calls were ignored, as were requests to help a woman who vomited and urinated on the bus. As the protesters called out for help, said Lyle, the deputy turned up the radio volume. "It was the song 'God Bless America,'"said Lyle.
Verizon Wireless has reached an unorthodox deal with three major cable companies that could transform the way consumers get access to TV, cellphones and the Internet, setting up a consortium of firms with enormous power over mobile and home entertainment. ... Verizon will pay $3.6ââ¬â°billion to Comcast, Time Warner and Brightline Cable to use a swath of cellphone airwaves that the cable giants own but do not use. ... The cable companies would essentially kill plans to move into the cellular industry. Meanwhile, Verizon would promote the cable companies even where it offers its fledgling cable and home Internet service known as FiOS.
If this does not convince people that selling spectrum in corrupt auctions was a bad idea, nothing will.
SOPA, meanwhile, is mutating into a ITC controlled censorship by big bank financial blockade law and dropping the auto DNS and search engine provisions. Financial blockade is currently killing Wikileaks, so the result is still US controlled censorship.
San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit thinks disrupting protests is more important than being able to call an ambulance, the fire department or other first responders. The FCC may not agree
All non free software demands this power over users and that is why non free software is always a bad deal.
Just as we are all reading about Carrier IQ, with our eyes wide in horror and our jaws on the ground, the Software Freedom Law Center has announced that it has filed comments [PDF] with the US Librarian of Congress, asking for an exemption to the DMCA, so that users can legally control their own devices -- have the legal authority to control what software is installed, including being able to install a completely free operating system, and be able to remove whatever is not desired.
The new National Defense Authorization Bill (S1867) presented to the Senate by the Armed Services Committee is such a disaster for civil liberties and human rights it is difficult to know where to begin.
The broadcast media's ignorance and unwillingness to cover the National Defense Authorization Act, a radical piece of legislation which outrageously redefines the US homeland as a "battlefield" and makes US citizens subject to military apprehension and detainment for life without access to a trial or attorney, is unacceptable.
There have been a few print stories but corporate media mostly ignores and defends the act which makes easy what companies have previously done to protesters one at a time with SLAPP and laws defining animal rights protest as terrorism. Banksters would love to be able to round up OWS protesters and throw them into "Communication Management Units or jails built to house undocumented aliens in each state. President Obama again pledged to veto the law but not for the right reasons.
the ACLU called it "an historic threat to American citizens", this bill is so dangerous not only to our rights but to our country's security that it was criticized by the Directors of the FBI, the CIA, the National Intelligence Director and the U.S. Defense Secretary! For the first time in our history, if this Act is not vetoed, American citizens may not be guaranteed their Article III right to trial. ... Senator Lindsey Graham declared that suspected citizens open themselves up "to imprisonment and death". "And when they say, 'I want my lawyer,' you tell them: 'Shut up. You don't get a lawyer.'" ... we could witness the US government targeting a large range of political dissidents, human rights activists, humanitarians, and maybe even "occupiers".
Free software literally gives you freedom in the area of computing. It means that you can control your computing. It means that the users individually and collectively have control over their computing. And in particular it means they can protect themselves from the malicious features that are likely to be in proprietary software ... human rights support each other. In an age when a lot of what we do, we do with computers, if we don’t have freedom in our computing, that makes it harder for us to defend or fight for freedom in other areas.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel shares details of Walker's plan, which we'll title "The Safe Capitol Requires Expenditure of Wages, the Protection of Everyone, Official Permits, and Liability E-surance (SCREW the PEOPLE) Act of 2012"
Essentially, the governor would like to charge protesters the cost of beating them. The Milwaukee Journal article
notes that Walker is recycling an old smear about the cost of the protests[a stranger] showed up at the very end of our allotted 3 hours of free speech time, and was told she was part of our "event" and that she would be ticketed and could risk arrest if she didn't leave.
Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. "special rapporteur" for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.
When Rietveldt bought a Harry Potter DVD early 2007, he noticed that the campaign video with his music was on it. And this was no isolated incident. The composer now claims that his work has been used on tens of millions of Dutch DVDs, without him receiving any compensation for it. ... The existence of excellent copyright laws and royalty collecting agencies in the Netherlands should mean that the composer received help and support with this problems, but this couldn’t be further from what actually happened. ... a board member of a royalty collection agency offered to to help the composer to recoup the money, but only if he received 33% of the loot.