If you've ever worked in IT, you know that the clueless secretary isn't your worst enemy. At least she knows the knows nothing. Your worst enemy is the "power-user". The guy who knows just enough to fuck everything up. This is the same thing. Breeding people who know a little bit about 2 programming languages is breeding a catastrophic collection of idiots who don't know that they know nothing.
Teaching someone the basic principles of programming, that's cool. Let them know a little about how algorithms work and stuff, a little bit of basic understanding of what, exactly, programming is. But please don't teach someone a little bit about a programming language or two.
There's no reason why civil service can't be a condition of citizenship. Military service is something different, I get that you might not want to kill people. But conscientious objection to sitting at a desk doing administrative work? On what basis? Cruelty to paper?
*** Finding a way to effectively deal with bureaucratic capture of institutions is probably the number one human problem.
Ancient Athens had it solved, and the solution is incredibly simple: No career bureaucrats, no career politicians.
Everyone in the athenian administration was basically the equivalent of a conscript. Part of being a citizen was the duty to serve a few months in the administration every few years.
If product A is sold X times, but your market analysts say it should've sold Y then you don't know if your analysis is wrong or what of many factors contributed to the difference.
I had marketing in university. Even the experts in that field say that half of the marketing budget is pure waste, they could just as well burn the money. The problem is that they don't know (at least beforehand), which half.
Same here. The distributors only have one half of the data set - the data about the people who bought their product. They don't have the data on the people who didn't. If I don't buy movie A, only I know if it is because I plain didn't like it, or I didn't have the money, or there was a better movie that weekend, or the advertisement didn't reach me and I didn't know it was on, or I didn't because I found a torrent.
So no, they do not have all the data. They have data, and plenty of it, but it's still incomplete.
I do agree that most people here on/. have even less data, though.
"Probably"? If you don't know whether making an encrypted copy of a copyrighted work is infringment, how can you speak on any other part of copyright law?
IANAL and this is not legal advise, bla bla. I say "probably" because I'm not a professional in this area and thus I can't be 100% sure that there is not a very specific exception that might apply to this very specific case, but for the general point of the argument, it is an infringement.
And tell me, exactly how a copyright holder is going to prove the infringment
I did point out several times throughout this thread that I am excluding the problem of evidence from the argument, because it's not relevant to the point. Claiming you have found a way to commit a crime undetected, and claiming you have found a way in which a crime is not a crime anymore are two very different claims and shouldn't be mixed up.
The OP claimed that by using math tricks, he could commit copyright infringement in plain sight because it somehow isn't copyright infringement anymore. I'm arguing against that specific point, not against any attempt to hide or obfuscate what you're doing.
Please refer us to the rulings in court cases that shows your statement is correct.
Uh, any case on digital copyright infringement ever? You can't make a digital copy without transformation steps, if nothing else than the error correction on the low-level storage will differ from one copy to the other. No one has brought that argument up yet, AFAIK - why? Because the lawyers know it doesn't matter.
Fair use is an entirely different thing. Fair use is where copying is allowed. You wouldn't have to encrypt or otherwise change anything because it's legal in the first place.
Since an encrypted version of the copyrighted content cannot be shown to contain the content in any way, it's not infringing.
Ok, here's a key: 12345
Please RSA-encrypt a movie of your choice with it and send it to me. I'll notify the police and you can test that defense in court.
More seriously, I did point out several times in this discussion that for the sake of the argument I'm ignoring the problem of evidence and proof. Yes, encryption can make it more difficult to prove that the file you torrented actually is a copyrighted work. But that wasn't what the OP was going for, he thought he could evade the law by the digital equivalent of handwaving.
It probably is an act on infringement because a copyrighted movie was used in the creation of your output data. Basically, you're trying to tell the judge that a*b is different from b*a. If you do that for real I wouldn't be surprised if you get an additional fine for contempt of court.
Cryptographically, your xor transform is a one-time-pad encryption and crazy secure. But legally speaking it's no different from ROT13'ing the movie. The matter in front of the judge is not going to be the strength of your encryption, but the question of copyright infringement. And unless your lawyer finds a part in the relevant laws where it says that strong encryption is an exception case, you're still toast.
That's what I'm trying to tell you people: All thise mental masturbation is on the geek, tech, crypto level and not on the law level.
Ok, maybe a different example: Explain to your girlfriend how what you did was technically not cheating. You can have a bulletproof argument that can be logically proven to be correct. It won't matter, because you are playing the wrong game. You might win the argument, you'll lose the girl.
Same with this. You might win admiration from fellow geeks for a nifty scheme, you'll lose the court battle. Because you're fighting the wrong game.
I wouldn't put the real/fake distinction into the database at all. I would put it into the code. For example, a simple noise function (pseudo-random, but deterministic) using a never-changing part of the user data such as the ID as input determines which of the n passwords is the valid one.
But frankly, the fact that a single user has more then one password at all would be a dead-giveway that there's some kind of trap to any skilled attacker. If you're not interested in securing individual accounts, but to detect mass-hacking, you could just insert fake accounts and make them trigger the alarm. Again, the distinguisher doesn't have to be in the database at all.
You are still trying to win points with sophism after I've told you that the only thing you'll get for that is a reprimand for wasting the court's time if things ever get to that level?
I am not infringing copyright because I created those words myself, so I am the copyright holder.
Again, don't think that playing tricks with math is the first anyone has ever come up with. Sure, mathemetically you can find a transformation function that turns Bambi into Star Wars. And once more I'm telling you that is at best mildly amusing to a judge.
Really, get your head out of your math dream world. You can go round and round elaborating how your Tor network send packets around, in the end the only question that matters is still going to be whether you did or did not press that button, knowing it would cause a man to die.
Or, in the case of copyright violation, the question will be whether or not you intended to make a copy of a copyrighted work available to others without authorisation. No matter what tricks and hoops and math you put inbetween. You really, really need to get that into your head: It doesn't matter. Not one bit. In fact, a good prosecutor will use every additional step you add to convince the court that you were trying hard to cover up your steps proving that you knew what you did was illegal.
You aren't the first to try playing tricks with math, language or whatever other tool on the law. Unfortunately for you, the law has two millenia more experience in this game.
People thought they could do the same thing with basically any crime in the books - make some changes to the way it is done so that it isn't recognizable anymore and get away.
Surprise, the law doesn't care about the way you do it. If you kill someone, that's murder (or any of a related, bla) and it doesn't matter if you used a gun or a knife or an orbital laser array that you programmed through a Tor network and accessed over an encrypted botnet controller interface with a hundred other layers of indirection. It'll make proving that it was you who pushed the button more difficult, but if that can be done than it's still murder, plain and simple.
Same thing with copyright infringement. You take a copyrighted work, apply any number of whatever operations on it, make a copy and distribute it and you're in violation of copyright, plain and simple. The number and kind of operations in the intermediate step don't matter one iota. And as long as you don't get that into your head, you'll be laughed at when they slam you. Do you think the judge will be the smallest bit impressed by anything you said above? He'll have one question and one question only and that is: Did you copy a copyrighted work without authorisation, yes or no?
And no, that is not something that is unique of this new digital world. That's techie bla bla. You can say the same of paint or letters. No, the book sellers don't have a copyright on the letters A through Z, but they do have a copyright on a specific number of them in a specific order, otherwise known as a novel, or a poem, or a drama or whatever.
No, the movie industrie does not have a copyright on 0 and 1, yes it does hold the copyright to specific collections of 0s and 1s in specific orders. Or more specifically: To the content of what these numbers represent.
Copyright is not a mathematical concept. You can't "defeat" it with mathematics. For all the law cares, math is a tool to apply transformations on content, but that doesn't change the fact that the content is copyrighted, end of story.
I'm on facebook. I use it for the messenger and practically no other part of my private life. It's a nifty way to be able to tell all your friends that you love/hate/miss them at once, without making real, personal, intimate contact with anyone.
Also, it reminds you of everyone's birthday.
The rest of the site could disappear tomorrow and I'd hardly notice.
You are thinking like a geek, not like a lawyer or judge.
Evidence and proof aside, a lawyer or judge will look at it more like this:
Encrypting something is inconsequential in the legal sense. After a few beer, one might be inclined to discuss whether or not encrypting copyrighted material falls under the definition of a derived work, but most likely it would not because there's no creative act involved, and thus not a derivation, but a simply copy. If you make your copy available online, you are guilty. Encryption doesn't matter. It's just a reversible transformation. That the downloader can't use it without the key doesn't matter. The illegal act is the act of copying, not of watching.
Do you really think a centuries-old profession of people who all went to university just like we IT guys did are so easily defeated? That's the equivalent of saying if you take the keyboard away from a geek, he'll be baffled and incapable of doing any computer stuff ever again. Of course not, how stupid. He'll just find a new keyboard and all you've done is keep him busy for a few hours. Same with all those geeky hiding schemes. Legally, they'll amuse the judge for a few minutes and that's all.
The advantages of encryption and steganography have never been on the legal side, but on making it more difficult to prove that you did what you did, or capture you doing it in the first place.
Who would be responsible for this copyright infringement?
You think you are smarter than the people who write and interpret the laws. Newsflash: You aren't. Chances are, they yawn at your scheme. Because, you know, people trying to find loopholes in the law isn't exactly news, they've been around for at least 2000 years, and the law-people have been dealing with them that long. We techies are just the most recent breed.
I've worked with lawyers and judges. Trust me, all these geeky schemes of distributing the responsibility until it disappears is at best mildely interesting to them. The law doesn't go by technical details, it goes by intent and action. So, basically, if it's a copy of Iron Man 3, and you uploaded it, then you are guilty of copyright infringement, period. All the encryption and key and bla bla bla doesn't change the basic facts, it only makes it more difficult to prove your act.
Really, stop being so arrogant and thinking that you can outsmart a profession 50 times older than your own on their home turf.
...until some bot working for the RIAA thinks it's a really funky music video and issues an automated takedown notice that YouTube automatically honours, taking your precious files offline.
From the longer text it appears that you have been asked by management to teach them. If you haven't, then my immediate response stands. Don't teach management about IT unless they asked for it, because a) they won't care if it comes unasked and b) knowing about IT is what they hired you for.
But if you were asked to teach management about IT, then ignore everything you learnt. Don't try to compress a computer science curriculum into a few hours. Teach them only what has immediate practical application for their day job. Unless they are a very rare breed of managers, they'll care little for anything else.
Even in the case where something "provokes immediate violence", we seem to forgot that there is still someone deciding to become violent. Other than the example of yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre, hurting or killing someone is not the immediately obvious correct action to whatever someone says.
I can relate, I definitely can. There are many things that make me want to punch the speaker in the face, or shoot him. Mostly stuff said by people like the pope, Sarah Palin types or extremist islamists or any of a long list of we-should-withdraw-your-license-to-breathe idiots.
But, I am a civilised man and keep it just a thought.
If we would apply the same "provoking violence" standard to the people who tell others to go out there and kill the unbelievers, or murder the abortion doctors, or shame the faggots - the same standard that many seem to want to imply when it comes to the blogs, FB posts and tweets of atheists, homosexuals or other non-conformants, then we could maybe have a discussion.
As it stands, the people who want to silence you and the people who want to kill you if you continue to speak are of the same kind.
I'm not an expert on the subject, so I won't debate the details.
A single exception does not, however, invalidate a general statement unless you are in the realm of theoretical mathematics. Jumping out of a plane without a parachute is a stupid idea and usually fatal, and the fact that a small number of people have survived such falls doesn't mean we should make it into a sports.
If there are apparently other causes as well, in addition or whatever, it is certainly worth investigating them. Especially as controls.
But, just like global warming, sometimes it is better to err on the side of caution than waiting until every last fact is in and every last doubter convinced, and also it is way too late to do anything about it.
Although bees are endangered, they aren't the only ones pollinating.
No, but you quote a 75% figure yourself.
Imagine 75% of the contents of your local grocer disappearing and then tell me that ain't a major effect. Oh wait, your source already quantifies it in billion dollars. There's your economic impact right there.
You've been drinking too much of the lobbyism cool-aid.
From the little (but non-zero) research I've made into the subject, there is a very clear correllation between the banned substances and bee disappearance. While they are uncertainties, they are not in the "if", but in the details - how much exactly does this contribute? is it the only factor or one of several? what are the time scales? etc. etc.
The main reason the industry is railing against it is the usual suspect: Money. This stuff is incredibly profitable. I'm not playing an "evil" card here, I understand everyone who wants to keep his income. If you were to tell the butcher down the street that he has to close up, he'll be angry and by rights. But sometimes, it's what you need to do for the greater good.
Facebook strips all metadata from all images that you upload. It's the reason a fairly well-known professional photographer I happen to know doesn't use it for anything, up to and including not having any pictures of himself on Facebook and asking his friends to not post pictures of him.
It's disrespectful. For some exif data like location, it's actually nice, but there should be an "I know what I'm doing" option.
what can you do with a 3-D printer that's worth the bother?
I'm a pen&paper roleplayer, LARPer and boardgame enthusiast. The list of things I can imagine printing if it were a) affordable and b) a lot easier to build the shapes is almost endless.
Slashdot Mirror
If you've ever worked in IT, you know that the clueless secretary isn't your worst enemy. At least she knows the knows nothing.
Your worst enemy is the "power-user". The guy who knows just enough to fuck everything up. This is the same thing. Breeding people who know a little bit about 2 programming languages is breeding a catastrophic collection of idiots who don't know that they know nothing.
Teaching someone the basic principles of programming, that's cool. Let them know a little about how algorithms work and stuff, a little bit of basic understanding of what, exactly, programming is. But please don't teach someone a little bit about a programming language or two.
Why?
There's no reason why civil service can't be a condition of citizenship. Military service is something different, I get that you might not want to kill people. But conscientious objection to sitting at a desk doing administrative work? On what basis? Cruelty to paper?
*** Finding a way to effectively deal with bureaucratic capture of institutions is probably the number one human problem.
Ancient Athens had it solved, and the solution is incredibly simple: No career bureaucrats, no career politicians.
Everyone in the athenian administration was basically the equivalent of a conscript. Part of being a citizen was the duty to serve a few months in the administration every few years.
Data doesn't always establish causality.
If product A is sold X times, but your market analysts say it should've sold Y then you don't know if your analysis is wrong or what of many factors contributed to the difference.
I had marketing in university. Even the experts in that field say that half of the marketing budget is pure waste, they could just as well burn the money. The problem is that they don't know (at least beforehand), which half.
Same here. The distributors only have one half of the data set - the data about the people who bought their product. They don't have the data on the people who didn't. If I don't buy movie A, only I know if it is because I plain didn't like it, or I didn't have the money, or there was a better movie that weekend, or the advertisement didn't reach me and I didn't know it was on, or I didn't because I found a torrent.
So no, they do not have all the data. They have data, and plenty of it, but it's still incomplete.
I do agree that most people here on /. have even less data, though.
If it didn't work, they wouldn't put money into it.
Faulty assumption.
It doesn't have to work. They just need to believe it works. These are not the same things.
"Probably"? If you don't know whether making an encrypted copy of a copyrighted work is infringment, how can you speak on any other part of copyright law?
Read up on hedges.
IANAL and this is not legal advise, bla bla. I say "probably" because I'm not a professional in this area and thus I can't be 100% sure that there is not a very specific exception that might apply to this very specific case, but for the general point of the argument, it is an infringement.
And tell me, exactly how a copyright holder is going to prove the infringment
I did point out several times throughout this thread that I am excluding the problem of evidence from the argument, because it's not relevant to the point. Claiming you have found a way to commit a crime undetected, and claiming you have found a way in which a crime is not a crime anymore are two very different claims and shouldn't be mixed up.
The OP claimed that by using math tricks, he could commit copyright infringement in plain sight because it somehow isn't copyright infringement anymore. I'm arguing against that specific point, not against any attempt to hide or obfuscate what you're doing.
Please refer us to the rulings in court cases that shows your statement is correct.
Uh, any case on digital copyright infringement ever? You can't make a digital copy without transformation steps, if nothing else than the error correction on the low-level storage will differ from one copy to the other. No one has brought that argument up yet, AFAIK - why? Because the lawyers know it doesn't matter.
Fair use is an entirely different thing. Fair use is where copying is allowed. You wouldn't have to encrypt or otherwise change anything because it's legal in the first place.
Since an encrypted version of the copyrighted content cannot be shown to contain the content in any way, it's not infringing.
Ok, here's a key: 12345
Please RSA-encrypt a movie of your choice with it and send it to me. I'll notify the police and you can test that defense in court.
More seriously, I did point out several times in this discussion that for the sake of the argument I'm ignoring the problem of evidence and proof. Yes, encryption can make it more difficult to prove that the file you torrented actually is a copyrighted work. But that wasn't what the OP was going for, he thought he could evade the law by the digital equivalent of handwaving.
It probably is an act on infringement because a copyrighted movie was used in the creation of your output data. Basically, you're trying to tell the judge that a*b is different from b*a. If you do that for real I wouldn't be surprised if you get an additional fine for contempt of court.
Cryptographically, your xor transform is a one-time-pad encryption and crazy secure. But legally speaking it's no different from ROT13'ing the movie. The matter in front of the judge is not going to be the strength of your encryption, but the question of copyright infringement. And unless your lawyer finds a part in the relevant laws where it says that strong encryption is an exception case, you're still toast.
That's what I'm trying to tell you people: All thise mental masturbation is on the geek, tech, crypto level and not on the law level.
Ok, maybe a different example: Explain to your girlfriend how what you did was technically not cheating. You can have a bulletproof argument that can be logically proven to be correct. It won't matter, because you are playing the wrong game. You might win the argument, you'll lose the girl.
Same with this. You might win admiration from fellow geeks for a nifty scheme, you'll lose the court battle. Because you're fighting the wrong game.
Yeah, like all great ideas, it needs polishing.
I wouldn't put the real/fake distinction into the database at all. I would put it into the code. For example, a simple noise function (pseudo-random, but deterministic) using a never-changing part of the user data such as the ID as input determines which of the n passwords is the valid one.
But frankly, the fact that a single user has more then one password at all would be a dead-giveway that there's some kind of trap to any skilled attacker. If you're not interested in securing individual accounts, but to detect mass-hacking, you could just insert fake accounts and make them trigger the alarm. Again, the distinguisher doesn't have to be in the database at all.
This is one of those small ideas that are so simple and seem so obvious that upon reading them your first thought is "why didn't I think of that?".
You are still trying to win points with sophism after I've told you that the only thing you'll get for that is a reprimand for wasting the court's time if things ever get to that level?
I am not infringing copyright because I created those words myself, so I am the copyright holder.
Again, don't think that playing tricks with math is the first anyone has ever come up with. Sure, mathemetically you can find a transformation function that turns Bambi into Star Wars. And once more I'm telling you that is at best mildly amusing to a judge.
Really, get your head out of your math dream world. You can go round and round elaborating how your Tor network send packets around, in the end the only question that matters is still going to be whether you did or did not press that button, knowing it would cause a man to die.
Or, in the case of copyright violation, the question will be whether or not you intended to make a copy of a copyrighted work available to others without authorisation. No matter what tricks and hoops and math you put inbetween. You really, really need to get that into your head: It doesn't matter. Not one bit. In fact, a good prosecutor will use every additional step you add to convince the court that you were trying hard to cover up your steps proving that you knew what you did was illegal.
You aren't the first to try playing tricks with math, language or whatever other tool on the law. Unfortunately for you, the law has two millenia more experience in this game.
You still think on the wrong track. Really.
People thought they could do the same thing with basically any crime in the books - make some changes to the way it is done so that it isn't recognizable anymore and get away.
Surprise, the law doesn't care about the way you do it. If you kill someone, that's murder (or any of a related, bla) and it doesn't matter if you used a gun or a knife or an orbital laser array that you programmed through a Tor network and accessed over an encrypted botnet controller interface with a hundred other layers of indirection. It'll make proving that it was you who pushed the button more difficult, but if that can be done than it's still murder, plain and simple.
Same thing with copyright infringement. You take a copyrighted work, apply any number of whatever operations on it, make a copy and distribute it and you're in violation of copyright, plain and simple. The number and kind of operations in the intermediate step don't matter one iota. And as long as you don't get that into your head, you'll be laughed at when they slam you. Do you think the judge will be the smallest bit impressed by anything you said above? He'll have one question and one question only and that is: Did you copy a copyrighted work without authorisation, yes or no?
And no, that is not something that is unique of this new digital world. That's techie bla bla. You can say the same of paint or letters. No, the book sellers don't have a copyright on the letters A through Z, but they do have a copyright on a specific number of them in a specific order, otherwise known as a novel, or a poem, or a drama or whatever.
No, the movie industrie does not have a copyright on 0 and 1, yes it does hold the copyright to specific collections of 0s and 1s in specific orders. Or more specifically: To the content of what these numbers represent.
Copyright is not a mathematical concept. You can't "defeat" it with mathematics. For all the law cares, math is a tool to apply transformations on content, but that doesn't change the fact that the content is copyrighted, end of story.
My solution:
I'm on facebook. I use it for the messenger and practically no other part of my private life. It's a nifty way to be able to tell all your friends that you love/hate/miss them at once, without making real, personal, intimate contact with anyone.
Also, it reminds you of everyone's birthday.
The rest of the site could disappear tomorrow and I'd hardly notice.
You are thinking like a geek, not like a lawyer or judge.
Evidence and proof aside, a lawyer or judge will look at it more like this:
Encrypting something is inconsequential in the legal sense. After a few beer, one might be inclined to discuss whether or not encrypting copyrighted material falls under the definition of a derived work, but most likely it would not because there's no creative act involved, and thus not a derivation, but a simply copy.
If you make your copy available online, you are guilty. Encryption doesn't matter. It's just a reversible transformation. That the downloader can't use it without the key doesn't matter. The illegal act is the act of copying, not of watching.
Do you really think a centuries-old profession of people who all went to university just like we IT guys did are so easily defeated? That's the equivalent of saying if you take the keyboard away from a geek, he'll be baffled and incapable of doing any computer stuff ever again. Of course not, how stupid. He'll just find a new keyboard and all you've done is keep him busy for a few hours. Same with all those geeky hiding schemes. Legally, they'll amuse the judge for a few minutes and that's all.
The advantages of encryption and steganography have never been on the legal side, but on making it more difficult to prove that you did what you did, or capture you doing it in the first place.
Who would be responsible for this copyright infringement?
You think you are smarter than the people who write and interpret the laws. Newsflash: You aren't. Chances are, they yawn at your scheme. Because, you know, people trying to find loopholes in the law isn't exactly news, they've been around for at least 2000 years, and the law-people have been dealing with them that long. We techies are just the most recent breed.
I've worked with lawyers and judges. Trust me, all these geeky schemes of distributing the responsibility until it disappears is at best mildely interesting to them. The law doesn't go by technical details, it goes by intent and action. So, basically, if it's a copy of Iron Man 3, and you uploaded it, then you are guilty of copyright infringement, period. All the encryption and key and bla bla bla doesn't change the basic facts, it only makes it more difficult to prove your act.
Really, stop being so arrogant and thinking that you can outsmart a profession 50 times older than your own on their home turf.
...until some bot working for the RIAA thinks it's a really funky music video and issues an automated takedown notice that YouTube automatically honours, taking your precious files offline.
You are an idiot, and you have no idea what you're talking about.
Yours,
an iPad user who isn't frustrated at all, and can type or create documents just fine.
My immediate response to the title was "don't".
From the longer text it appears that you have been asked by management to teach them. If you haven't, then my immediate response stands. Don't teach management about IT unless they asked for it, because a) they won't care if it comes unasked and b) knowing about IT is what they hired you for.
But if you were asked to teach management about IT, then ignore everything you learnt. Don't try to compress a computer science curriculum into a few hours. Teach them only what has immediate practical application for their day job. Unless they are a very rare breed of managers, they'll care little for anything else.
Is 'Time' a fascinating work of art, a deep sociological experiment â" or the longest-running shaggy-dog joke in history?
or simple all of the above ?
Even in the case where something "provokes immediate violence", we seem to forgot that there is still someone deciding to become violent. Other than the example of yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre, hurting or killing someone is not the immediately obvious correct action to whatever someone says.
I can relate, I definitely can. There are many things that make me want to punch the speaker in the face, or shoot him. Mostly stuff said by people like the pope, Sarah Palin types or extremist islamists or any of a long list of we-should-withdraw-your-license-to-breathe idiots.
But, I am a civilised man and keep it just a thought.
If we would apply the same "provoking violence" standard to the people who tell others to go out there and kill the unbelievers, or murder the abortion doctors, or shame the faggots - the same standard that many seem to want to imply when it comes to the blogs, FB posts and tweets of atheists, homosexuals or other non-conformants, then we could maybe have a discussion.
As it stands, the people who want to silence you and the people who want to kill you if you continue to speak are of the same kind.
I'm not an expert on the subject, so I won't debate the details.
A single exception does not, however, invalidate a general statement unless you are in the realm of theoretical mathematics. Jumping out of a plane without a parachute is a stupid idea and usually fatal, and the fact that a small number of people have survived such falls doesn't mean we should make it into a sports.
If there are apparently other causes as well, in addition or whatever, it is certainly worth investigating them. Especially as controls.
But, just like global warming, sometimes it is better to err on the side of caution than waiting until every last fact is in and every last doubter convinced, and also it is way too late to do anything about it.
Although bees are endangered, they aren't the only ones pollinating.
No, but you quote a 75% figure yourself.
Imagine 75% of the contents of your local grocer disappearing and then tell me that ain't a major effect. Oh wait, your source already quantifies it in billion dollars. There's your economic impact right there.
You've been drinking too much of the lobbyism cool-aid.
From the little (but non-zero) research I've made into the subject, there is a very clear correllation between the banned substances and bee disappearance. While they are uncertainties, they are not in the "if", but in the details - how much exactly does this contribute? is it the only factor or one of several? what are the time scales? etc. etc.
The main reason the industry is railing against it is the usual suspect: Money. This stuff is incredibly profitable. I'm not playing an "evil" card here, I understand everyone who wants to keep his income. If you were to tell the butcher down the street that he has to close up, he'll be angry and by rights. But sometimes, it's what you need to do for the greater good.
In case you didn't know already:
Facebook strips all metadata from all images that you upload. It's the reason a fairly well-known professional photographer I happen to know doesn't use it for anything, up to and including not having any pictures of himself on Facebook and asking his friends to not post pictures of him.
It's disrespectful. For some exif data like location, it's actually nice, but there should be an "I know what I'm doing" option.
what can you do with a 3-D printer that's worth the bother?
I'm a pen&paper roleplayer, LARPer and boardgame enthusiast. The list of things I can imagine printing if it were a) affordable and b) a lot easier to build the shapes is almost endless.