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Showing posts from December, 2011

A New Era in Music: Spotify

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I am proud to say that I grew up during the twilight years of the Physical Music Age. I remember my first album, it was the Dangerous cassette by Michael Jackson. The first CD I ever owned was also from Michael Jackson, the History album. Then came Napster. Napster brought us into the Open Digital Age. The original Napster allowed us to freely "share" music with anyone on the web. The more people that were on Napster, the more music we had access too. In essence, we had access to all music for free. However, as fast as Napster rose, so was its decline. The music industry/ Metallica struck hard at Napster with lawsuits. Out of the ashes came Morpheus, but that was struck down by the music industry/ Metallica. Then Kazaa rose, but that was also struck down. Kazaa was the last great massively used program to download music for free. There are other programs like BearShare and Limewire, but they never had a music library with the scope of the aforementioned programs. So in

The Issue of Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth

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If you have not heard, the woolly mammoth is coming back! Well, that is at least the attempt of scientists from Japan and Russia. The short version of the technology is that the scientists will replicate the DNA from old woolly mammoth bones...you know... very similar to the idea behind the Jurassic Park movies. I do not doubt that we will be able to bring back extinct animals as long as we have viable DNA. Furthermore, we will have the technology to clone humans, even ourselves. Life has taught me that if we can imagine a technology, then it can be done. We might be decades and centuries away from making that technology in to a reality, but it will be done. We are in an age of rapid technological advances. However, we cannot make things just because we can . So often we are "forced" to make new and more deadly weapons, because if we do not, our enemies will. That dilemma will never go away. People with money are often motivated for a new technology, not because it w