Only you've spotted the missing decimal place so far, and I'm hoping nobody else saw it.
I had one of those monster Panasonic transportables in the early days and that would put out 4 watts in 'car-mounted' mode and around 0.7 watts when you were lugging it around.
"My body is under a hightened state of awareness because it is under attack."
The viral attack is also going to raise your body temperature, which is less about overall 'awareness' than it is discomfort. Personally I sleep like a log when I'm becoming ill, although that could be coupled with a nasty case of sleep apnea (oxygen starvation coupled with interrupted deep sleep cycles leading to a deeper state of sleep).
"Brain damage due to post-tramatic stress syndrome is also proven and well documented."
*cough* Yeah, for a given value of 'brain damage'. Most notably the damage represented in the studies I've looked at are connected to differing blood flow and PTSD interrupting 'normal' brain functioning by triggering the Amagdyla into fight and flight before the prefrontal lobe can reason. This ain't the same as microwaving the area behind the ear. For one thing constantly banging the amagdyla into action is going to affect mood and physiological aspects of panic including psychological reinforcement if the person doesn't understand what's going on.
"Although I am no medical researcher I think the hypothesis that it may be bad for you is a good one."
I'd agree, but I haven't seen much compelling evidence that would suggest that microwaves at a ~4 watts cause the kind of malignant neoplasm that people have been barking about, and the 'study' appears to be a worse case scenario kind of thing rather than wholly objective, or it would have gone to peer review before the press. For one thing it appears that the study subjects might have been complaining of some symptoms before the study took place, and that's one of the worse things you can do in a double-blind
"It's important to point out that the first season played under the "British" rules was boring as hell and ratings were in the toilet. Since this new format was adopted it is much more of a success."
Funnily, the ratings have stabilised a lot in the UK. I suspect that this might betray something about both nations psychosocial differences.
Hurrah. ICANN in Washington having a go at Verisign...within two or three years Verisign'll have some serious gum marks, and they might get sucked to death in a little under a decade.
I'd like to posit that it's actual the brain pixies being made sleepy by the magic moonbeams that the mind control lasers produce interacting with the 3G network.
"Say what? If I filter my mail, how does that in *any way* protect me from some asshole..."
They say that sarcasm is the lowest form of humour, but I like to start low and work my way up to satire, metaphor and allusion when I know my audience is breathing from the nose.
So to make it really obvious, filters wouldn't have helped and the original poster tried to pin the blame on the user for a joe-job.
To the extent where I'm going to apologise for being a c**t. Sorry.
"The only real answer to a technical problem is a technical solution. Regulations and litigation deal with societal problems, not technical ones."
Spam is a sociological problem in terms of this idea of constantly bugging people to buy stuff. Pretty much every communication method has had to deal with this, but generally you're talking about single bodies that can be asked, cajoled and threatened to stop the transport...fax, phone, mobile...
ISPs made a big fuss about stepping back from the information they carried because of the whole child porn/copywritten content issue, something that came up during the recent senate hearing with the RIAA, and the handwringing that has taken place by them has really gotten my goat. ISPs are the first chokepoint for email entering a subnet...they're in a bloody good position to handle this stuff and personally I'd prefer that this duty wasn't handed over to a Carnivore box because someone was too bloody wet to handle it.
"replacement, or enhanced, SMTP"
Or build a network of trusted SMTP servers with full authentication by using the relay system as is already allowed by SMTP but not used because of the relative difficulty of building a network from the current 'mush' we have.
Hell, I know admins that are firewalling the entire.cn TLD because of the huge number of completely open relays...but how are those open relays connected to the internet? That's the key.
Given that there's some horrendous inroads by spammers into hacking and DDoS attacks to the extent where RBLS are being pushed off the net, spammers should have their access to the internet cut, which means stamping on open relays until they can prove that they're no longer open.
"ISPs monitoring, filtering or denying the use of port 25 is a stupid way to prevent spam."
Blocking port 25 stops 100% of spam. That's it's overgregarious is the problem.
The main point of this is that if you try to place the burden on the end-users, a huge quantity of which are still not running virus-checkers, have open SMTP relays and confirm their email address as live at every available opportunity, then the squealing will come from that direction. They demand protection from offensive spam, the ISPs shrug, and guess who steps into the gap?
You really want Government moderating this? I certainly don't because as soon as they get involved, it's like watching a monkey rewire a car.
So far the community of technically competant people have completely failed the more clueless users, but they represent a larger block of people who complain louder. ISPs currently have AUPs coming out of their asses to indemnify themselves against anything, so why not do something about the spam problem _aggressively_.
"Monitoring volume of traffic may work, but that would mean penalizing people who transfer large attachments too."
They're already penalized. 10Mb of storage is considered to be 'a' capacity that is limited, but that would be a single datagram stream/connection rather than a blizzard of smaller connections. The thing is that nothing will be perfect, there will always be cracks, but at the moment there is nothing happening that would cut down on the massive amount of traffic that is floating around the infrastructure at the moment.
My best idea so far is to hit, and hit hard, the companies that 'benefit' from spam, but that gets government involved, and so far they aren't doing that well with tracking back the people using open relays, despite netblocks being submitted, having names, etc. etc.
"content analysis of a datastream over port 25."
It would have no effect on downstream transfer between MTAs. Sure, these days it's point-to-point between the destination and source, but then you'd have an IP in the headers. You could even run destination filtering to check the From, return-path and path statements which would cut down on a minority of spam. Hell, that's how I track mine back.
"Those who trade their ports for a little temporary security do not deserve ports or security, and in the end, will have neither."
"So unless the ISPs monitor all port 25 traffic, and parse it to determine the number of emails"
Why would you need to parse a connection? Look at the origin, compare to the destination.
"And of course, encrypting the traffic between the spammer and the relay (like SSHing into a rooted box before spamming) would nullify this technique anyway."
I'm hoping that you aren't working anywhere critical. Ignore the content, that approach hasn't worked, but simply look at the volume of traffic.
SSH'ing into a rooted box usually isn't necessary and is overkill. I like your use of buzzwords, though. Nice touch.
"Again, working at an ISP, we cannot dictate what a user can or should not receive."
Horseshit. Go and read your AUP regarding guarantees of service. What you meant to say was, 'If we get caught running false positives it would be embarrassing'.
"He should have installed filters."
Of course he should. That would have stopped the joe-job happening.
What I don't get is why ISPs don't have some method of, say, 'assuming' that someone receiving several hundred bouncebacks is either the victim of a joe-job or actually spamming. What do you think? Reasonable?
So block the service and drop someone a call. Swallow the emails. Tell the person who's account it was that unfortunately everything got caught in the doohickey superspam frobulator and it's another fine service.
As someone that works for an ISP, stop wringing your hands and DO something.
Jesus. This would be like the car industry saying that they couldn't install car alarms because of the inconvienience of people losing the fobs.
"when flyer distributors come around, does anyone beat their ass or track them down."
Nope. I tell them I don't want them, and they respect my wishes. If they continue then I find out where the flyers are from and have a word with them...steadily it goes up the chain until it hits law enforcement.
"Get a filter, and if your ISP doesn't do shit change ISP's."
Dude, the problem isn't the _end-user_, it's the piss-poor hand-wringing produced by every ISP so far that argues that they're a carrier. It's the ludicrously bad handling of complaints and the carriage of stuff from known 'bad' netblocks. It's about ISPs allowing serial rapid-fire ICMP(8) without even a courtesy call to ask if people are running virus checkers.
At this moment in time my ISP (Demon/Thus) has disabled ICMP(8) to help calm MSBlaster. It's a bitch, but it's a proactive approach.
"no one should dictate what someone should or should not receive"
Don't be an ass. That's the kind of free speech bollocks that the marketers use.
We've just started seeing Big Brother (US) in the UK for the first time, and the differences are startling.
In the UK game (which is becoming increasingly 'gimmicked'), the housemates are nominated by the other housemates, and the three with the most votes go to a public vote. Generally it's about public perceptions from the outside, and the press (mostly tabloids) tend to pick someone to support. There have been some interesting accusations of 'vote stuffing' in the past.
In the American version, it's closed voting and alliances are encouraged to provide voting blocks. This is a complete change to the UK version, and partially turned me off because of the constant bitching, but it's essentially a high-pressure political environment compared with the slightly more cooperative model of Big Brother UK.
As entertainment, we once created a science-fiction scenario that involved four different groups of people trying to stop a terrorist attack on a space elevator. The (large) group of people was split into four groups; counter-terrorism units, police, corporate sponsors and terrorists...runners were used to take messages between each group and there were GMs available that would release information as and when 'stuff' happened.
Needless to say that it started off in complete chaos, but as people got into the rhythm it was interesting to see the dynamic emerge...
All the hostages died, though.
But this kind of exercise is reliant on technology supplying the answers when they should be geting people to use ingenuity by saying, 'okay, you want to kill hundreds of people. How do you do it?'.
If this is Leik Myrabo's group, then they can get 4-5Kg 200 feet up. While impressive as a technology demonstrator, they're short of the multi-tonne LEO vehicle that is required these days.
Re:Once again here is a possible answer...
on
NASA's New Space Wheels
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"did get off the ground, but never more than a low hover."
The functional test that destroyed the DCX involved lifting to a hover, rotating around a horzontal axis, translating laterally, rotating back to vertical and translating down and laterally again. The destruction was caused when a landing strut failed to 'lock', and the whole thing toppled over.
The thing about the DCX is that it was unmanned, SSTO, powered throughout and scarily good, but it didn't impress people that liked the renderings of the X-33. Gotta remember those oversight committees love renderings.
I sense some interesting feeling there. I'd personally let that go as a point because America engineered the most of it, built the majority of it, and pretty much designed it. Apart from the power block, which was delivered late.
"Earth orbit is for robots, and space planes suck."
Only the hybrid scramjets.
Look, the point behind getting humans into orbit is to get humans into orbit. Despite our sensitivity to radiation, laughable adaption to microgravity and the emotional cost of losing a couple in a fiery death, there is NO robot out there that can make balanced judgements and evaluate circumstances like a human.
"many(many, many) years ago i was reading a national geographics issue that showed several purposed designs of a controled land landing of a Gemini capsule using a cross between a parafoil and a hang glider."
I believe the term is 'aerofoil', but I've been horribly wrong before on numerous occasions. I've never understood why this wasn't investigated further apart from the reliance on moving parts (which is bad) to get the aerofoil to deploy enough to inflate. Bear in mind that this application would have to have an extremely good success rate to avoid those downtimes while contractors argue about who's 'fault' the 150-mile debris field is.
"I'm not sure what the standy safety measures were for a crew of 7"
As far as I remember, there were plans for the CRX (X38 & X40) that was an automated return craft for the ISS, but this got caught in budget cuts.
I seem to recall there was some horse-trading between NASA and the Russians over building things in a technology exchange, but specialist tools and materials kept going missing on the way to Baikonur.
"help anti-terrorism workers 'think outside the box.'"
When I saw this originally reported, I couldn't help thinking 'no way'...
For one thing, they'll be swapping a 'box' created by assumptions for one supplied by the 'game' writers. Hasn't anyone just said to them, 'take five days off and come up with ten real world examples of terrorist vectors.'
"...way that the artist gets paid is by selling 20,000 copies of their record."
Lets not mix apples and cumquats. Unless the 'indie' label is wholly own by one of the big companies (which happens, simply because the cartel has marketing power), then they're unlikely to be feeling the benefits of the control of radio airplay and those nice fellows at the RIAA. The flipside is they're esoterica, and less likely to be pirated.
I quoted Steve Albini because he's well known and has a fairly good perspective on what happens with the large companies...
If you can feel you can comment, why does EMI Group run 400 labels? Are there 400 genres?
Re:Experience With a Restrictive Employment Contra
on
Who Owns Your Weblog?
·
· Score: 1
"They had no interest at all, which I'm sure they regretted for a long time."
As such, companies now are trying to retain rights to _everything_ rather than let anyone catch a break from them.
Although the temptation is to argue the toss, I think it tends to depend on what's being talked about...if you develop a competing product at work, then there's no doubt that you owe them, but there isn't a chance in hell that I'd let my company have any part of my life outside hours or the front doors unless they plan on paying for them. Start on that slippery slope and they'll take, and take, and take...
It's important to note that anyone being told that their job is on the line if they don't sign a contract is _specifically_ disallowed by pretty much all employment law in the western world, and a threat like that would be worth a mint in litigation court.
The correct answer to such a threat is 'Can I have that in writing?'
"Among other activities, they are planning to play a game called 'Starving Artist' with 5th-9th graders, where students come up with an idea for a record album, cover art, and lyrics only to be told by teachers that the album is already available for download for free."
The teacher will phone them this information from the Bahamas and tell them that they've got to produce four more albums in line with the standard contract.
"but do you have to resort to this tired, adolescent "mass media loves big corporations loves evil government" schtick to get your point across?"
As long as thats the current state of affairs, then people are going to refer to it. labelling it 'tired and adolescent' would be akin to my labelling you an 'ignorant toad'...no real content, but an opinion.
"proceeding with logic this time instead of hysterics"
He has a minor point which you missed, Mr Spock. Media isn't interested at the moment because it's unlikely to sell advertising space out thar in userland...the flow of money has become so sharply delineated in recent years that it's the only thing worth following.
Didn't mean it about being a 'toad', it was just to illustrate a point.
Slashdot Mirror
"digital cell phones put out less than 1 Watt."
shh.
Only you've spotted the missing decimal place so far, and I'm hoping nobody else saw it.
I had one of those monster Panasonic transportables in the early days and that would put out 4 watts in 'car-mounted' mode and around 0.7 watts when you were lugging it around.
"My body is under a hightened state of awareness because it is under attack."
The viral attack is also going to raise your body temperature, which is less about overall 'awareness' than it is discomfort. Personally I sleep like a log when I'm becoming ill, although that could be coupled with a nasty case of sleep apnea (oxygen starvation coupled with interrupted deep sleep cycles leading to a deeper state of sleep).
"Brain damage due to post-tramatic stress syndrome is also proven and well documented."
*cough* Yeah, for a given value of 'brain damage'. Most notably the damage represented in the studies I've looked at are connected to differing blood flow and PTSD interrupting 'normal' brain functioning by triggering the Amagdyla into fight and flight before the prefrontal lobe can reason. This ain't the same as microwaving the area behind the ear. For one thing constantly banging the amagdyla into action is going to affect mood and physiological aspects of panic including psychological reinforcement if the person doesn't understand what's going on.
"Although I am no medical researcher I think the hypothesis that it may be bad for you is a good one."
I'd agree, but I haven't seen much compelling evidence that would suggest that microwaves at a ~4 watts cause the kind of malignant neoplasm that people have been barking about, and the 'study' appears to be a worse case scenario kind of thing rather than wholly objective, or it would have gone to peer review before the press. For one thing it appears that the study subjects might have been complaining of some symptoms before the study took place, and that's one of the worse things you can do in a double-blind
"It's important to point out that the first season played under the "British" rules was boring as hell and ratings were in the toilet. Since this new format was adopted it is much more of a success."
Funnily, the ratings have stabilised a lot in the UK. I suspect that this might betray something about both nations psychosocial differences.
Hurrah. ICANN in Washington having a go at Verisign...within two or three years Verisign'll have some serious gum marks, and they might get sucked to death in a little under a decade.
"Is the actual study available anywhere"
Not yet published. This is the kind of short-circuiting of peer review that starts to get silly after a while.
"could be the bodies reaction to brain damage."
And slashdot calls this 'interesting'?
I'd like to posit that it's actual the brain pixies being made sleepy by the magic moonbeams that the mind control lasers produce interacting with the 3G network.
That's gotta be worth a 'genius'.
"Say what? If I filter my mail, how does that in *any way* protect me from some asshole..."
They say that sarcasm is the lowest form of humour, but I like to start low and work my way up to satire, metaphor and allusion when I know my audience is breathing from the nose.
So to make it really obvious, filters wouldn't have helped and the original poster tried to pin the blame on the user for a joe-job.
Thanks for your input.
"The gist comes through, I think."
.cn TLD because of the huge number of completely open relays...but how are those open relays connected to the internet? That's the key.
To the extent where I'm going to apologise for being a c**t. Sorry.
"The only real answer to a technical problem is a technical solution. Regulations and litigation deal with societal problems, not technical ones."
Spam is a sociological problem in terms of this idea of constantly bugging people to buy stuff. Pretty much every communication method has had to deal with this, but generally you're talking about single bodies that can be asked, cajoled and threatened to stop the transport...fax, phone, mobile...
ISPs made a big fuss about stepping back from the information they carried because of the whole child porn/copywritten content issue, something that came up during the recent senate hearing with the RIAA, and the handwringing that has taken place by them has really gotten my goat. ISPs are the first chokepoint for email entering a subnet...they're in a bloody good position to handle this stuff and personally I'd prefer that this duty wasn't handed over to a Carnivore box because someone was too bloody wet to handle it.
"replacement, or enhanced, SMTP"
Or build a network of trusted SMTP servers with full authentication by using the relay system as is already allowed by SMTP but not used because of the relative difficulty of building a network from the current 'mush' we have.
Hell, I know admins that are firewalling the entire
Given that there's some horrendous inroads by spammers into hacking and DDoS attacks to the extent where RBLS are being pushed off the net, spammers should have their access to the internet cut, which means stamping on open relays until they can prove that they're no longer open.
"ISPs monitoring, filtering or denying the use of port 25 is a stupid way to prevent spam."
Blocking port 25 stops 100% of spam. That's it's overgregarious is the problem.
The main point of this is that if you try to place the burden on the end-users, a huge quantity of which are still not running virus-checkers, have open SMTP relays and confirm their email address as live at every available opportunity, then the squealing will come from that direction. They demand protection from offensive spam, the ISPs shrug, and guess who steps into the gap?
You really want Government moderating this? I certainly don't because as soon as they get involved, it's like watching a monkey rewire a car.
So far the community of technically competant people have completely failed the more clueless users, but they represent a larger block of people who complain louder. ISPs currently have AUPs coming out of their asses to indemnify themselves against anything, so why not do something about the spam problem _aggressively_.
"Monitoring volume of traffic may work, but that would mean penalizing people who transfer large attachments too."
They're already penalized. 10Mb of storage is considered to be 'a' capacity that is limited, but that would be a single datagram stream/connection rather than a blizzard of smaller connections. The thing is that nothing will be perfect, there will always be cracks, but at the moment there is nothing happening that would cut down on the massive amount of traffic that is floating around the infrastructure at the moment.
My best idea so far is to hit, and hit hard, the companies that 'benefit' from spam, but that gets government involved, and so far they aren't doing that well with tracking back the people using open relays, despite netblocks being submitted, having names, etc. etc.
"content analysis of a datastream over port 25."
It would have no effect on downstream transfer between MTAs. Sure, these days it's point-to-point between the destination and source, but then you'd have an IP in the headers. You could even run destination filtering to check the From, return-path and path statements which would cut down on a minority of spam. Hell, that's how I track mine back.
"Those who trade their ports for a little temporary security do not deserve ports or security, and in the end, will have neither."
You consider firewalls bad, then?
"So unless the ISPs monitor all port 25 traffic, and parse it to determine the number of emails"
Why would you need to parse a connection? Look at the origin, compare to the destination.
"And of course, encrypting the traffic between the spammer and the relay (like SSHing into a rooted box before spamming) would nullify this technique anyway."
I'm hoping that you aren't working anywhere critical. Ignore the content, that approach hasn't worked, but simply look at the volume of traffic.
SSH'ing into a rooted box usually isn't necessary and is overkill. I like your use of buzzwords, though. Nice touch.
"Again, working at an ISP, we cannot dictate what a user can or should not receive."
Horseshit. Go and read your AUP regarding guarantees of service. What you meant to say was, 'If we get caught running false positives it would be embarrassing'.
"He should have installed filters."
Of course he should. That would have stopped the joe-job happening.
What I don't get is why ISPs don't have some method of, say, 'assuming' that someone receiving several hundred bouncebacks is either the victim of a joe-job or actually spamming. What do you think? Reasonable?
So block the service and drop someone a call. Swallow the emails. Tell the person who's account it was that unfortunately everything got caught in the doohickey superspam frobulator and it's another fine service.
As someone that works for an ISP, stop wringing your hands and DO something.
Jesus. This would be like the car industry saying that they couldn't install car alarms because of the inconvienience of people losing the fobs.
"when flyer distributors come around, does anyone beat their ass or track them down."
Nope. I tell them I don't want them, and they respect my wishes. If they continue then I find out where the flyers are from and have a word with them...steadily it goes up the chain until it hits law enforcement.
"Get a filter, and if your ISP doesn't do shit change ISP's."
Dude, the problem isn't the _end-user_, it's the piss-poor hand-wringing produced by every ISP so far that argues that they're a carrier. It's the ludicrously bad handling of complaints and the carriage of stuff from known 'bad' netblocks. It's about ISPs allowing serial rapid-fire ICMP(8) without even a courtesy call to ask if people are running virus checkers.
At this moment in time my ISP (Demon/Thus) has disabled ICMP(8) to help calm MSBlaster. It's a bitch, but it's a proactive approach.
"no one should dictate what someone should or should not receive"
Don't be an ass. That's the kind of free speech bollocks that the marketers use.
We've just started seeing Big Brother (US) in the UK for the first time, and the differences are startling.
In the UK game (which is becoming increasingly 'gimmicked'), the housemates are nominated by the other housemates, and the three with the most votes go to a public vote. Generally it's about public perceptions from the outside, and the press (mostly tabloids) tend to pick someone to support. There have been some interesting accusations of 'vote stuffing' in the past.
In the American version, it's closed voting and alliances are encouraged to provide voting blocks. This is a complete change to the UK version, and partially turned me off because of the constant bitching, but it's essentially a high-pressure political environment compared with the slightly more cooperative model of Big Brother UK.
As entertainment, we once created a science-fiction scenario that involved four different groups of people trying to stop a terrorist attack on a space elevator. The (large) group of people was split into four groups; counter-terrorism units, police, corporate sponsors and terrorists...runners were used to take messages between each group and there were GMs available that would release information as and when 'stuff' happened.
Needless to say that it started off in complete chaos, but as people got into the rhythm it was interesting to see the dynamic emerge...
All the hostages died, though.
But this kind of exercise is reliant on technology supplying the answers when they should be geting people to use ingenuity by saying, 'okay, you want to kill hundreds of people. How do you do it?'.
"Laser Propulsion Group"
If this is Leik Myrabo's group, then they can get 4-5Kg 200 feet up. While impressive as a technology demonstrator, they're short of the multi-tonne LEO vehicle that is required these days.
"did get off the ground, but never more than a low hover."
The functional test that destroyed the DCX involved lifting to a hover, rotating around a horzontal axis, translating laterally, rotating back to vertical and translating down and laterally again. The destruction was caused when a landing strut failed to 'lock', and the whole thing toppled over.
The thing about the DCX is that it was unmanned, SSTO, powered throughout and scarily good, but it didn't impress people that liked the renderings of the X-33. Gotta remember those oversight committees love renderings.
"the Mostly American Space Station."
I sense some interesting feeling there. I'd personally let that go as a point because America engineered the most of it, built the majority of it, and pretty much designed it. Apart from the power block, which was delivered late.
"Earth orbit is for robots, and space planes suck."
Only the hybrid scramjets.
Look, the point behind getting humans into orbit is to get humans into orbit. Despite our sensitivity to radiation, laughable adaption to microgravity and the emotional cost of losing a couple in a fiery death, there is NO robot out there that can make balanced judgements and evaluate circumstances like a human.
"many(many, many) years ago i was reading a national geographics issue that showed several purposed designs of a controled land landing of a Gemini capsule using a cross between a parafoil and a hang glider."
I believe the term is 'aerofoil', but I've been horribly wrong before on numerous occasions. I've never understood why this wasn't investigated further apart from the reliance on moving parts (which is bad) to get the aerofoil to deploy enough to inflate. Bear in mind that this application would have to have an extremely good success rate to avoid those downtimes while contractors argue about who's 'fault' the 150-mile debris field is.
"Isn't that shuttle-jet craft we see in the intro going to be built?"
Venture Star
"I'm not sure what the standy safety measures were for a crew of 7"
As far as I remember, there were plans for the CRX (X38 & X40) that was an automated return craft for the ISS, but this got caught in budget cuts.
I seem to recall there was some horse-trading between NASA and the Russians over building things in a technology exchange, but specialist tools and materials kept going missing on the way to Baikonur.
"help anti-terrorism workers 'think outside the box.'"
When I saw this originally reported, I couldn't help thinking 'no way'...
For one thing, they'll be swapping a 'box' created by assumptions for one supplied by the 'game' writers. Hasn't anyone just said to them, 'take five days off and come up with ten real world examples of terrorist vectors.'
Seriously, this worries the life out of me.
"...way that the artist gets paid is by selling 20,000 copies of their record."
Lets not mix apples and cumquats. Unless the 'indie' label is wholly own by one of the big companies (which happens, simply because the cartel has marketing power), then they're unlikely to be feeling the benefits of the control of radio airplay and those nice fellows at the RIAA. The flipside is they're esoterica, and less likely to be pirated.
I quoted Steve Albini because he's well known and has a fairly good perspective on what happens with the large companies...
If you can feel you can comment, why does EMI Group run 400 labels? Are there 400 genres?
"They had no interest at all, which I'm sure they regretted for a long time."
As such, companies now are trying to retain rights to _everything_ rather than let anyone catch a break from them.
Although the temptation is to argue the toss, I think it tends to depend on what's being talked about...if you develop a competing product at work, then there's no doubt that you owe them, but there isn't a chance in hell that I'd let my company have any part of my life outside hours or the front doors unless they plan on paying for them. Start on that slippery slope and they'll take, and take, and take...
It's important to note that anyone being told that their job is on the line if they don't sign a contract is _specifically_ disallowed by pretty much all employment law in the western world, and a threat like that would be worth a mint in litigation court.
The correct answer to such a threat is 'Can I have that in writing?'
"equals ... zero!"
From the horses mouth, so to speak. Steve Albini talks about the whole process and the backflips the record company lawyers do.
In fact, personally I think they should be teaching kids about how to spot such damningly satan-esque contract law.
"Among other activities, they are planning to play a game called 'Starving Artist' with 5th-9th graders, where students come up with an idea for a record album, cover art, and lyrics only to be told by teachers that the album is already available for download for free."
The teacher will phone them this information from the Bahamas and tell them that they've got to produce four more albums in line with the standard contract.
"but do you have to resort to this tired, adolescent "mass media loves big corporations loves evil government" schtick to get your point across?"
As long as thats the current state of affairs, then people are going to refer to it. labelling it 'tired and adolescent' would be akin to my labelling you an 'ignorant toad'...no real content, but an opinion.
"proceeding with logic this time instead of hysterics"
He has a minor point which you missed, Mr Spock. Media isn't interested at the moment because it's unlikely to sell advertising space out thar in userland...the flow of money has become so sharply delineated in recent years that it's the only thing worth following.
Didn't mean it about being a 'toad', it was just to illustrate a point.