In a way isn't a genetic fingerprint a hash by itself.

A hash is an form of ensuring the (genetic) code is exactly the same.
You could basically see every living being as a walking collecting of genetic hashes. Some of these hashes we share others are unique to a species or sub-species or unique to a single person.

The only difference is that we do not understand the genetic code well enough to use them in the same way as a hash code.

Any musician can sound good on record given enough time to tweak and tune their work.

But the true beauty of music - in my opinion - comes from the quality of an life performance.
How often do you see an DJ that really gets the crowd going? It happens but it's pretty rare.

Now compare that to a life performance with real instruments. It has soul, the music drips with the sweat and effort of the musicians.
At times the quality of the music almost becomes less important than the performance or at least it can compensate to an degree.

Go visit an competent rock or metal band each and everyone will have an significant crowd going wild and dancing. Often these bands can get and keep an entire crowd of thousands of people to enjoy the experience.

So can digital music replace even most instrumental musicians, absolutely not. Not by a long shot.
I simply think that the current platforms such as soundcloud in combination of high quality digital production software affordable for average people is responsible the increase of digital music over the years.

Their code wasn't up to par with business standards while they where still in uni.

How odd... who would have thought that such famous people would have to learn things as well, I'am shocked!
Here I was thinking that unless you where born with l33t programming skills and your first words are in binary you can never make it in the world.

But seriously..

Most famous people in business are not where they are now because they started out especially good in their field, they became who they are now because they had original idea's and worked endless hours to make it possible.
And if you're working on your project in your parents basement you usually don't worry about how to maintain your code as long you understand how it works.

This is something all coders go through at some point.

Now we just need people to realize that power can be generated in other ways then fossil fuel or nuclear power.

We literally need to take back the power from the power companies.

First and foremost I believe that every person on this planet has the right to electrical power.
For this reason any use of patented technology for the sake of generating power should be open en free to everyone.

There are so many technologies with so much promise that are currently being held and exploited by corporations trough patents and unless you make a stand not only will they just happily trample over us having the power to shut us down unless you pay their ridiculous prices but unless we have the capability to generate and distribute our own power an total blackout is not just a possibility, it's a disaster waiting to happen.

The project taking shape in Colorado is a good example of some major steps forwards in bringing back the control to the people: http://neweracolorado.org/

Isn't this kind of obvious?

I mean this is the whole reason why our advancement in any field is ridiculously slow.

We still drive cars with inefficient combustion engines burning away precious resources for what? Because it's easy to sell something that you use up instead of selling something once that lasts an lifetime.

We still drive cars, humans suck at driving cars and are the cause of traffic congestion costing tons of money, wasting millions of fuel and pumping poisonous gasses into our atmosphere. We have to breath that stuff, yet we don't care.

We still throw away the majority of our used resources. There are billions of dollars worth of gold, silver, lithium and other rare earth materials dumped in 3rd world countries all because it's easier to just make something new. Instead of investing in technologies to re-use those resources.

We still believe that if you work hard you do well and that everyone should work even if that means you're doing something you hate, is simply degrading and can easily be replaced by a machine that can do it faster, work 24/7 and produce a higher quality product. All that for the simple reason that 'society' considers this to be a better option then leaving people jobless.

Our society is stuck in limbo worshiping money and the people that have it at the cost of everyone's well-being and happiness all that while destroying our planet, our home for the sake of those beliefs.

What is the point of a few professors and engineers saying it's interesting, that is not at all relevant.

The question is simple: Does it make a lot of money? If so should we or should we not further exploit current, slower, higher carbon footprint and more financially lucrative options.

Would it be a great improvement over current forms of travel? Of course.
Would it be a great way to show the world the US is actually investing in something cutting edge? Of course.
Would it eventually make its money back? Most likely.

Yet, I can assure you they will not build this Hyperloop train any time soon if ever.

We live in a society where money is everything. Advancement in technology only comes in second place when it comes to weapons in every other field we can be lucky if its importance is even in the top 10.

Ohh well.. enough evil conspiracy talk...

I hope to ride the Hyperloop train at sometime in my life and even though I expect to live at least 50 to 60 more years I somehow doubt I will even see it in action on TV.

Wouldn't it be much easier, cheaper and more secure if the Chinese government would develop their own OS from scratch?

Even though many of us do not agree with the way the Chinese government runs the country but they - unlike most countries - have the ability to make things happen.
They have plenty of highly skilled coders en plenty of resources, I believe it's one of the few countries that can pull it off successfully.

This will give them many advantages:

- Full source control
- More secure / not dependable on other parties to fix issues.
- Can be catered to the needs of the government / Chinese people.

I have an extremely terrible memory making math exceptionally hard as I can't keep numbers in my head without them going all over the place and it's not much different for remembering the equations.

So I have been looking for ways to help me remember and I found a website that does just that:

https://www.khanacademy.org/

The practice video's and exercises combined with simple short term goals such as achievements for getting x answers right in a row or within a certain speed really gives me a constant focus point.

You should give a go, it's good fun =)

This question has been answered a few hundred years ago by the strategic genius Sun Tzu.

One of his most famous quotes is relevant to this question:

"If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles."

Knowing who your enemy is, where his troops are stations, what tactics he uses, what plans he has, how he leads his military and people.
Especially in the past but still valid to this days are spies and saboteurs who often physically go into enemy territory in order to gather information, sabotage important processes or assassinate important people.

Even though the old fashioned spies and saboteurs of course still exist but in this time where information is shared trough computers over networks it's the most obvious systems for spies and saboteurs to use and we coined these specialists "Hackers".

They still have the same basic function of gathering information, disrupting the enemy or (politically) assassinate someone important by leaking information.

Hackers are tools of war and very crucial ones at that and countries that invest in these spies will have an major edge over other countries that don't.
If played well even the smallest countries or even individual groups and people can start and end a war.

In the end war is nothing more then a tool used to further a political agenda, it always has been.

Instead of finding even more ways to strip the earth of all useful materials they should be investing in recycling used materials.

There are literally millions if not billions (in both weight/tons and in value) of rare earth materials in thrown away products around the world.

They should be investing in developing technologies to recycle old products and re-use as many of the materials as possible and not just the rare ones either as materials that are a plenty now will become rare if we continue to use and throw them away.

Large companies have the advantage in fast and cheap production and with that they also have dips on what they feed the public.

Copying existing products is one thing but I'm much more interesting in the products normal people can create.

Most of today's products are not made with the goal of making the best possible product they are made with the goal of making profit.

But just think... if you where to design a pair of sneakers for yourself would you make something that is not the best you can possibly create? Who cares about overly expensive brands with fancy patented technologies made to last a year before they break. I believe it's time we start producing products that are custom fit and are made to last.

Naming servers after people, places or mythical creatures is a cute thing to do for your home server but it has no room in a business.

The purpose of naming a server is to know where it is, what it does and who it belongs to.

An simple example that will work for most small and medium businesses:

Example:

A = Datacenter Amsterdam
B = Datacenter Brussel
V = Virtual Machine

A-SQL01 (The first SQL Server on a dedicated hardware machine located in the Amsterdam datacenter)
A-DHCP01 (The first DHCP Server on a dedicated hardware machine located in the Amsterdam datacenter)
B-DNS04 ( The fourth DNS Server on a dedicated hardware machine located in the Brussel datacenter)
V-DC01 ( The first Domain Controler hosted on a Virtual Machine)

You can basically add/remove variables to fit your needs.

If you're a datacenter and host servers for others it could look like:
--

So that could look like: A24-wesellstuff-DC01

So that would be the first domain controller from the company We Sell Stuff that is located in Amsterdam mounted in the 24th enclosure.

So if your monitoring tools show that the server A24-wesellstuff-dc01 you know right away where the problem server is located, who owns it and what its primary function is without the need to dig trough documentation.

I agree that childpr0n is horrible but this is worse.

Not only are those children raped and have video's and pictures taken and posted on the internet now they are being screwed by their politicians as well?

Childpr0n is bad but Nation / European / Worldwide censorship is 100x worse. They should invest their money in actually finding and hanging the makers of this crap instead of turning everyone into an criminal.

But I highly doubt the idea will stand for long probably will get shot down the next meeting... They should jail the person/people who came up with this idea.. have they done something against the law? I don't think so but better safe then sorry, right? They might commit a crime at some point. Better jail them for the rest of their lives and make sure that doesn't happen. Lets call it precrime prevention!

Yeah, I really have to hand it to Apple's marketing department.

For some reason they managed to make Apple something "everyone" wants. Which is odd.

Apple doesn't produce the best phone hardware. Better yet even on the release date the hardware wasn't really worth the price tag on the device.
Apple doesn't really have the best software. iOS is pretty good but limited and iTunes... I won't even go in to that piece of ... .
Apple doesn't really produce the best PC hardware. I agree that the designs are often nice but when looking at the actual hardware you can often build a better computer for half its price.

So for my conclusion...

In the past Apple devices where an niche market. Expensive with good hardware and the software was quite good for the time. For some reason I can't explain they managed to keep the "exclusive" status without being exclusive. Everyone and their dog has a iPhone these days and everyone seems to be proud of their device.

Apple is not a technological company it's an fashion company. They are / try to be the Gucci or Armani of the technology market and that tactic seems to work quite well for them.

I agree with the court decision in this case.

What I would find really interesting is how this works with books, magazines and websites and such.

If a computer magazine uses something along the line of "First pictures of the new iSomething". They basically use an apple product name to sell their product without paying for the brand name.

Or a tabloid paper. Normally if you want a famous person to attach their name to your product it will cost you a ton of money because those names are basically products. Tabloids and similar use all those names without permission.