What is Sharding?

Sharding is a type of database partition that split up very large databases the into smaller, faster, more easily managed parts called data shards. The word shard means a small part of a whole.

Here’s how Jason Tee explains sharding on The Server Side, “In the simplest sense, sharding your database involves breaking up your big database into many, much smaller databases that share nothing and can be spread across multiple servers.”

Technically, sharding is a synonym for horizontal partitioning. In practice, the term is often used to refer to any database partitioning that is meant to make a very large database more manageable.

The governing concept behind sharding is based on the idea that as the size of a database and the number of transactions per unit of time made on the database increase linearly, the response time for querying the database increases exponentially.

Additionally, the costs of creating and maintaining a very large database in one place can increase exponentially because the database will require high-end computers. In contrast, data shards can be distributed across a number of much less expensive commodity servers. Data shards have comparatively little restriction as far as hardware and software requirements are concerned.

In some cases, database sharding can be done fairly simply. One common example is splitting a customer database geographically. Customers located on the East Coast can be placed on one server, while customers on the West Coast can be placed on a second server. Assuming there are no customers with multiple locations, the split is easy to maintain and build rules around.

Data sharding can be a more complex process in some scenarios, however. Sharding a database that holds less structured data, for example, can be very complicated, and the resulting shards may be difficult to maintain.

5 Cool Places to Explore in Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad, or “Little Russia,” as the locals call it, has gone through more than its fair share of historical turmoil: founded by the Teutonic Knights, it then belonged to the Kingdom of Poland, then to Prussia and the German Empire, only for it to finally become a part of the USSR and then Russia. Discover the many things to do in Kaliningrad, from learning about its maritime history to enjoying beautiful music.

Königsberg Cathedral

The Königsberg Cathedral is the most important Prussian building in Kaliningrad. The church was first built as a Catholic place of worship, which later became Lutheran after the Reformation. It was destroyed during World War II and rebuilt only recently, in the 1990s.

Immanuel Kant’s tomb

Immanuel Kant, one of the most important thinkers in the history of philosophy, was born and spent his entire life in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad. He was buried in the Königsberg Cathedral, and what was initially a small tomb inside the building eventually became a modest mausoleum outside, in the north-east corner of the Cathedral. Kant and Kaliningrad are inseparably connected; the places where he lived and worked are most certainly worth seeing.

Amber Museum

Baltic is famous for its amber: there is something hypnotizing about all the shades of gold it can take on, and about the creatures trapped in it for millions of years. In Kaliningrad’s Amber Museum, not only can you buy inexpensive amber jewelry, you can see the most impressive pieces of amber found in the Baltic out on display. The exhibition also includes some elaborate sculptures and a brief history of amber processing in the Soviet Union.

Dancing Forest

A few kilometers north of the city, there is a narrow strip of land separating the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. It’s the Curonian Spit, a sandy dune leading from Kaliningrad to Lithuania, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site shared by both countries. If you have time, go there on a sunny day, enjoy the view of the massive sand dunes, and dance in the Dancing Forest, where the trees are crooked in the most bizarre ways for reasons yet unknown.

Maritime Museum

Kaliningrad is Russia’s only port in the Baltic that never freezes; it is therefore extensively used for both civil and military purposes. Russian scientific exploration of the seas is displayed in the Museum of the World Ocean. Pop by to discover the fascinating world of underwater creatures, and the no-less fascinating equipment used to observe them.

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What is Cryptocurrency Staking?

Cryptocurrency staking has become an alternative way for crypto investors to make money from the market. Staking of cryptocurrencies is usually possible by digital currencies using the proof of stake (PoS) and the delegated proof of stake (DPoS) consensus mechanisms.

What is Proof of Stake?

Proof of Stake (PoS) concept states that a person can mine or validate block transactions according to how many coins he or she holds. This means that the more Bitcoin or altcoin owned by a miner, the more mining power he or she has.

What is staking in cryptocurrencies?

Cryptocurrency staking is the act of hodling crypto in your wallet for a specific period, then earning interest as a result of that. Users receive rewards by hodling the cryptocurrencies, and the earnings differ depending on the length of time an investor hodl the cryptocurrency in their wallet. The longer the staking duration, the higher return an investor gets.

Staking is used as a way of validating transactions on a blockchain, similar to what mining represents in the proof of work (PoW) protocol. In a PoS blockchain, the higher the coins a user holds in his/her account, the higher the chances that they would take part in a transaction validation process.

The next validator in a PoS system is usually chosen in a random process which is heavily influenced by the number of coins a user is holding at that particular time or in some cases, the length of time the user has been keeping the cryptocurrency.

How does crypto staking work?

Crypto staking works in a similar fashion to traditional fixed deposit investment accounts, the longer your staking time, the higher the reward you would earn at the end of the tenure. Staking coins differ from one cryptocurrency to another, but the underlying principle behind then remains the same. If you want to stake coins on most PoS and DPoS networks, you would be required to operate a node or masternode, or you can join one of them.

The staking mechanism also has a delegation feature that allows users to delegate other people to carry out votes on their behalf. Users can earn coins if they entrust their vote to a trusted party, and is one favorite way that investors make money via the staking system. This feature gives delegate extra validation power, who will, in turn, pay its customers coins for their votes.

Benefits of the staking protocol

Staking cryptocurrencies have several advantages to the users, and they include;

Investors with a large holding of a cryptocurrency would be able to validate transactions on the blockchain. This is unlike the PoW system where the job falls solely to miners.
Unlike the PoW protocol, the consensus mechanism in this system eliminates the need for high-end computer networks, which usually consumer high energy and cost a lot to maintain. This makes staking an environmentally friendly cryptocurrency consensus method.
The value of PoS cryptocurrencies does not depend on ASICs and other mining equipment, with their prices only affected by a change in the market conditions.

The probability of a 51% attack is usually lower in PoS cryptocurrencies compared to their PoW counterparts.

Is Blockchain Secure?

The security of personal data, especially that which is stored online, is a human right. It has failed to evolve and actually been deteriorating in recent years. Blockchain technology has the potential to entirely change this.

All of our data is stored online. We concede some of our most private information to the platforms that we use on a daily basis and we are often unaware which of our personal data is collected. Many users still conceal some of their most valuable data behind the shockingly weak combination of a username and password, with over half of users openly admitting they use the same password for all of their logins.

Is Blockchain Secure?

Yes, blockchain is innately secure. It utilises powerful cryptography to give individuals ownership of an address and the cryptoassets associated with it, through a combination of public and private keys, made up of combinations of random numbers and letter. This solves the issue of stolen identity as addresses are not directly associated with users’ identity, whilst also being far harder to compromise. Private keys are even more secure as they are considerably longer. It is in this way that blockchain offers a greater level of security to the individual user as it removes the need for weak and easily compromised passwords and online identities.

Is a Private Blockchain More Secure than a Public One?

The practise of building a private blockchain to preserve security is a severely misguided one. It is true that a private blockchain allows for the screening of participants, whereas a public blockchain is essentially accessible to everyone. However, it is this exposure that allows a public blockchain to develop immunity to hacks. For example, Bitcoin is the original public blockchain, having withstood years of relentless hacking without ever being compromised, getting more resilient with every hack that it withstands. This epitomises that public blockchains, much like Lisk’s, are considerably superior than private blockchains.

Can a Blockchain get Hacked?

No, a blockchain itself does not get hacked. The security of blockchain technology should not be confused with news about hacks, such as those carried out on cryptocurrency exchanges. Similarly, to normal hacks, the underlying vulnerability allowing for hacks on exchanges stem from centralisation. Despite blockchain technology being decentralized, there are still centralized aspects of it, such as cryptocurrency exchanges. This means that hackers can attack a single point in the hope of gaining access. As such, these hacks have given rise to calls for decentralized exchanges and it is only a matter of time before these become the main platforms allowing people to trade cryptocurrencies.

Such hacks epitomise how important it is for every aspect of blockchain to be as decentralized as possible, as distributed information and assets are definitely more secure.

The security of blockchain has roots in the cryptography that it utilizes however it is the technology’s decentralized nature that provides the foundations for its security. In fact, it is this distribution and decentralization that has got most people excited about the potential of blockchain technology.

One-Cancels-the-Other Order – (OCO) Explained

A one-cancels-the-other order (OCO) is a pair of orders stipulating that if one order executes, then the other order is automatically cancelled. An OCO order combines a stop order with a limit order on an automated trading platform. When either the stop or limit price is reached and the order executed, the other order automatically gets cancelled. Experienced traders use OCO orders to mitigate risk and to enter the market.

Basics of a One-Cancels-the-Other Order – (OCO)

Traders can use OCO orders to trade retracements and breakouts. If a trader wanted to trade a break above resistance or below support, they could place an OCO order that uses a buy stop and sell stop to enter the market.

For example, if a stock is trading in a range between $20 and $22, a trader could place an OCO order with a buy stop just above $22 and a sell stop just below $20. Once the price breaks above resistance or below support, a trade is executed and the corresponding stop order is cancelled. Conversely, if a trader wanted to use a retracement strategy that buys at support and sells at resistance, they could place an OCO order with a buy limit order at $20 and a sell limit order at $22.

If OCO orders are used to enter the market, the trader needs to manually place a stop loss order once the trade gets executed. The Time In Force for OCO orders should be identical, meaning that the timeframe specified for execution of both stop and limit orders should be the same.

How to place OCO order:

Select OCOorder type.

Select Base and Quote coin.

E.g. Market: BTC/LTC

Select the number of coins needs to be sold.

E.g. 10 coins. (quantity could be in the fraction)

Fill the Stop Loss fields.

Fill the Take Profit fields.

Blockchain in Agriculture

With 40% of the global workforce, agriculture sector presents 6.4% of the entire world’s economic production and its total worldwide production is $5,084,800 million. If you have ever visited a farm, you would have seen that farmers have complicated ecosystems with seasonal financing structures, careful timing and a lot of moving parts.

After the food leaves the farm for the market, it becomes a part of the vast supply chain involving a lot of intermediaries. Everyone would like to know where the food has been produced before it is served on the plate. What if you could check the quality of food before you eat it? It could become possible with the use-cases of blockchain in executing contracts and tracking information transparently. Blockchain agriculture is one of the compelling use cases that makes the process of growing and supplying food simpler. The agriculture supply chain can provide all involved parties with a single source of truth.

Applying Blockchain to Agriculture

According to ReportLinker, the blockchain in food supply chains and agriculture is estimated to be USD 60.8 million in 2018 and is projected to reach USD 429.7 million by 2023. The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality financed the first research project, “Blockchain for Agrifood” that has been proposed to explore blockchain implications for agrifood. Pilot studies indicate that blockchain technology enabled food to be traced from farm to grocery store in just a few seconds.

Blockchain also helps to keep tabs on abundant commodities and reduce cases of illegal harvesting and shipping frauds. The United Nation reveals that food frauds cost the global economy around $40 billion per year because of illicit trades.

Procurement Tracking

The challenge for the agriculture sector is to track and pay for the delivery of foods. Nowadays, the process depends on a third-party for coordinating the goods delivery. The sellers usually have an agent who ensures that the goods are delivered safely and buyers have an agent to recommend payment and audit the delivery. The involvement of multiple agents adds high costs to the system and makes the entire process time-consuming. With the blockchain, the whole process can be simplified to a single distributed ledger. Commodity buyers can directly interact with the supplier that speeds up the process and reduces the time to settle a payment. Also, the companies can save on additional agent fees and farmers can receive a larger share of sales directly with a blockchain based solution.

With the features like traceability and auditability, farmers can directly sell crops or food to the restaurant or individuals without the need for intermediaries.

Crop and Food Production

With the help of smart farming, IoT sensors could fetch important information like the temperature of the soil, water level, fertilizer details and more and send it to the blockchain. Based on the data saved in blockchain, smart contracts could trigger and execute the specific actions. It will help in enhancing the quality of the farming process as well as produced crops.

Weather crisis control

Farmers have to face the issues of unpredictable weather conditions throughout the year. Monitoring and predicting such factors can be crucial for better crop survival. Due to excessive rains, it becomes difficult for grown crops to tolerate flooding. Consumers are never aware of when did the crops suffer bad weather conditions and why did market face high surge pricing. As it is possible for the involved members to trace the weather conditions from the blockchain solution, farmers can quickly request and receive insurance claim through smart contracts.

Managing Agricultural Finance

Lack of transparency in credit history and agreements are some of the significant problems confronting between smallholders and financial inclusion. Today, financial services do not only allow smallholders to invest in farming but also help them in resolving liquidity constraints.

As a result, it becomes challenging for buyers to pay farmers, restricting smallholders to sell crops at comparatively lower rates. With blockchain, the agricultural finance process becomes more transparent and fairer, yet enables shared control accessibility.

The agriculture industry needs to do a lot of work to maintain and build consumer trust when it comes to the food quality check. A blockchain based agriculture solution holds a lot of promise for the agribusiness industry with its ability to bring transparency in the system.

5 Places to Visit in 2019 Moscow

As one of the most vibrant European capitals, Moscow is a powerful mix of history and edginess, full of world-famous sites and attractions. Russia’s capital has been in existence for more than 800 years and has enough to keep visitors busy for months. Here’s the ultimate first-timer’s list of things to do in Moscow, from Europe’s oldest fortress and grandiose cathedrals to lively green spaces and futuristic skyscrapers.

Red Square

The heart of Russia’s capital, Red Square is arguably Moscow’s most visited attraction. The cobblestone square is surrounded by beautiful architecture, and is the place where most of the city’s (and country’s) history unfolded. What was once a market square where traders would sell their goods is now a key location in the city, surrounded by unforgettable sites such as the Kremlin, St.Basil’s Cathedral, Lenin’s Mausoleum and other celebrated attractions.

St Basil’s Cathedral

Soak up the archetypal image of Russia’s capital with the glistening rainbow domes of St Basil’s cathedral. The onion-shaped domes were designed to make the building look like the shape of a flame on a bonfire. The cathedral was commissioned in the 1500s by Ivan the Terrible and according to legend, the Tsar thought it so beautiful he ordered that the architect be blinded so that he would never surpass this creation.

Lenin’s Mausoleum

Moscow’s ultimate love-it-or-hate-it landmark, Lenin’s Mausoleum houses a glass sarcophagus with the embalmed body of the legendary Russian revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin. First opened to the public in August 1924, the Mausoleum attracts around 2.5 million visitors every year, who don’t mind standing in line and going through a thorough body search to get into the illustrious building.

Moscow Kremlin

The biggest active fortress in Europe, Moscow’s Kremlin offers a week’s worth of attractions. Once you get behind the 2,235-metre-long kremlin walls, there are five squares to wander around, various buildings to explore, 20 towers to learn the names of, and the world’s largest bell and cannon to see.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

The largest foreign art museum in Moscow comprises three branches housing a collection of incredible works by masters of ancient civilisations, the Italian Renaissance and the Dutch Golden Age. The main building contains masterpieces by Botticelli, Tiepolo, Veronese and Rembrandt, some of which have never been displayed before. The Gallery of European & American Art, located next door, stores an incredible collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings.

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Blockchain in The Fashion Industry

When glamour meets tech, the corollary is very widely accepted by people over the world even though tech-enabled fabric would cost a little extra. Most of the big brands today are changing the course of conventional fashion towards a more outré fashion. Recently Levis launched a SUPER DOPE smart jacket in collaboration with Google specially for people who commute on a bike. It costs $350 yet it is gaining a lot of popularity. You can listen to music, enable google maps, answer phone calls and enable text on your jacket while on-go.

As I see it, the entire culture is shifting its pace and methods to infuse technology and related trends with it. The new way to survive is to adopt technology. Probably this is why most sports gear brand (like Nike) endorse themselves as more of a tech company than an apparel company. Nike is constantly coming up with radical solutions with state-of-the-art sensors to measure heart rate, speed, calories burnt, distance run while performing any activity.

The above case study was a typical example of Internet of Things (IoT) in fashion. Let’s see how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can revolutionise fashion. When I walk into Marks & Spencer, I see a myriad of options not knowing where to go. Also, FOMO clouds my judgment. What would it be like if M&S installs a kiosk in every section where customer can choose the type of fabric they want, the colour, the size et al — and the kiosk tells the customer what the store currently holds! It is like shopping on a mobile app but being physically in the store.

Blockchain critics love to replace blockchain with a regular database even in the most perfect of usecases. What makes blockchain unique is that the data once written onto the ledger can’t ever be changed. It won’t change even if God wants it to change. This means, nobody is more powerful than the other in a blockchain world. Only truth will triumph. Secondly, it is truly decentralised and distributed in nature so everyone can see what exactly is going on. There is NO centralised authority responsible to share the data. This means nobody owns the data. This concept is super powerful when people with dirty hands try to change “facts” just because they can.

Blockchain’s novelty engenders from its unique ability to bridge the gap between physical world and digital world (tokenisation) to create a REAL digital identity on the blockchain. Often, a cryptographic hash or “serial number” is the primary physical identifier which can be traced back to the product. This concept precludes manufacturing of counterfeit items because a “fake” hash can’t be generated.

There are so many social activist groups lambasting big fashion brands for harming animals, environment, or for unethical practices. A lot of consumers are also chary of buying anything that is made of animal skin. So, how about a concept where users know where exactly is the product they are purchasing coming from? Imagine the information about history of provenance is just a QR code scan away?

So many talented people dwell in remote places making intricate fabrics of great value. Most of the times, large fashion brands hire these poor people at a very low wage. This is practically exploiting people in an oppressive way.

In 2017, London designer Martine Jarlgaard, in collaboration with the blockchain company Provenance, took the initiative to produce the unprecedented “smart labels”. The consumer can scan the clothing item to see every step in the production process ranging from raw material to final product. This kind of transparency will likely be a selling point for consumers who increasingly want to know how and where their clothes are made.

At the end of the tunnel, there’s light. Likewise, the end result of blockchain is to integrate and include people in the economy who have been neglected till now. A dApp can be created for the people who are living in a deplorable condition to give them a livelihood. Since blockchain enables P2P trade inherently, there is no need for middlemen in the middle. People can directly buy from people rather than the brands. This would certainly take production back to the local, distributed hubs.

Legality and effectiveness of Digital Fingerprinting

Legality-

As you’ve probably figured out by this point, digital fingerprinting can be a powerful — perhaps even invasive — technology. Do you like the thought of your every online move being tracked, even if it’s only for the purpose of targeted advertising? Here’s a better question: Is it even legal?

Identity tracking fingerprinting treads on shaky ethical ground that may be deemed overly invasive and unlawful in the future. But because it’s a developing technology, those legal issues are still being sorted out. And with the Internet being a global network, laws regarding digital fingerprinting may develop completely differently from one country to another.

According to Canada’s guidelines, a digital fingerprint likely constitutes personal information, so usage of that information could be in violation of Canadian privacy laws. Canadian organizations are required to exhaust every possible non-invasive method of personal identification before resorting to methods like fingerprinting. Because fingerprinting “may collect more information than is necessary to identify fraudulent and duplicate respondents in online research,” Canadian organizations could get in trouble for tracking people unless they’ve received permission or exhausted all other opportunities.

The first form of digital fingerprinting we covered — matching identifying characteristics of copyrighted media to a database — doesn’t suffer from the same ethical challenges as identity tracking. License holders have the right to protect their content, and nothing about this form of fingerprinting invades the user’s privacy. Ideally, fingerprinting will actually decrease the number of copyright infringement lawsuits by stopping the illegal dissemination of licensed media. Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube was thrown out of court in 2010 because Google was found to be in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Because the site took down illegal videos when notified, it was protected under the DMCA and wasn’t held liable for the actions of its users. With better fingerprinting technology, the lawsuit may never have arisen at all. That statement puts a lot of faith into fingerprinting technology.

Effectiveness-

Digital fingerprinting sounds like the perfect technology to combat Internet piracy. It prevents users from spreading copyrighted content and potentially bypasses the hassle and expense of lawsuits. Once implemented by an organization, digital fingerprinting is a largely automated system, which means less work for content providers and media sites alike. Of course, all that convenience assumes one critical thing: that digital fingerprinting actually works.

Digital fingerprinting must be able to identify thousands or millions of pieces of content — content that can be disseminated in many media formats, cropped or edited in unexpected ways, or even recorded off a movie theater screen. Video elements like color, bitrate and even resolution can vary from video to video. With all those variables, can digital fingerprinting really work?

In 2007, Audible Magic’s Copysense fingerprinting technology was put to the test in an online video site called Soapbox. Soapbox was a Microsoft project that allowed users to upload videos a la YouTube. Even with Audible Magic’s fingerprinting technology at work, tech site Gigaom was easily able to upload a copyrighted video from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”. It took days for the clip to be taken down from Soapbox — even after Gigaom contacted Microsoft and Audible Magic for comment. Thinking the clip would then be indexed and protected against illicit sharing, Gigaom tried to upload it again. It worked. They had similar success on Myspace, which also employs Audible Magic’s fingerprinting.

Audible Magic protects against 11 million songs, movies and television shows. But with decades of media at our fingertips in digital form, the software obviously can’t safeguard against all illegal uploads. Digital fingerprinting also can’t stop most peer-to-peer file sharing, which distributes material directly between users. The effectiveness of digital fingerprinting in the future is entirely up in the air. If companies like Audible Magic continue to improve their recognition systems and expand their fingerprint databases, sites with user-generated content will be easier to maintain and the technology that identifies media will be more powerful than ever. Who knows? In 20 years, apps like Shazam may be able to differentiate between two live concert versions of “Free Bird” based on the length of a guitar solo.

Digital Fingerprinting Explained

Digital fingerprinting is the identification of large data files or structures using truncated information. A fingerprinting algorithm is one that reduces a larger data set to a very small data set, sometimes called a bit string, to promote efficient identification and search protocols.

One type of common fingerprint algorithm is called a hash function. These functions change a larger data set, sometimes known as a key, into a shorter data set, which may be called a hash. These altered pieces of data help make search techniques more agile.

One type of digital fingerprinting application is related to new digital media files. Experts note that digital fingerprinting helps a user locate a specific file to verify whether a file has been altered, while actually facilitating copyright protection. This involves using a fingerprint identifier to conduct protected file searches for other online file instances. Digital fingerprinting plays other roles for average end users, such as verifying whether particular file instances have been altered.

Digital fingerprinting technology relies on complex computer-driven analysis to identify a piece of media like a song or video clip. Here’s where the fingerprint analogy is born: Just like every person has a unique fingerprint, every piece of media has identifying features that can be spotted by smart software. But what good does this kind of identification really do? Sites like YouTube can scan files and match their fingerprints against a database of copyrighted material and stop users from uploading copyrighted files. Sounds simple, right? Surprisingly, people often confuse digital fingerprinting with watermarking or don’t have a clear picture of what the technology entails.

Part of the problem is that the term “digital fingerprinting” can actually refer to two entirely different things. The first meaning we’ve already covered, but the second works from a more traditional fingerprint analogy, equating your personal computer to an online fingerprint that can be used to track your online activity. Both concepts refer to a unique identifier, but with completely different functionalities — this second meaning has nothing to do with spotting copyrighted songs or videos. Neither one involves scanning real fingerprints, but they’re pretty cool technologies anyway. Let’s take a look at how they work.

Reasons for Digital Fingerprinting

The last two pages established that the term “digital fingerprinting” applies to two entirely different technologies. The thing they have in common, of course, is a computerized form of identification. Now that we’ve established how each technology works, let’s examine how each is used. YouTube presents an easy starting point. Copyright infringement constantly threatens the video site, and in 2007 Viacom sued Google for $1 billion over clips available on YouTube [source: CNET]. Google didn’t upload the clips itself, but it didn’t stop users from uploading the clips, either. Policing a site as large as YouTube is a huge challenge — how can Google keep unlicensed content out?

With digital fingerprinting. Google uses software it calls YouTube Video Identification to sort through uploaded videos and recognize copyrighted content. It also gives copyright owners the control to deny uploads or even monetize their content [source: YouTube] . This form of digital fingerprinting actually serves two purposes: It protects Google from harmful lawsuits and limits the unlicensed spread of copyrighted material. Ideally, this means both the companies that own the copyright and the companies who host that content online are protected by fingerprinting. The content isn’t spread illegally, and sites like YouTube avoid nasty lawsuits.

Of course, digital fingerprinting doesn’t have to be a restrictive technology. Another excellent example of fingerprinting at work is Shazam, the music identification app that can match a song’s audio sample to a musical database [source: Everything Else Matters Too]. On smart phones, Shazam uses a microphone to pick up audio from a song, analyzes it, and uses that data to find a match. Shazam then pulls up a page of information on the song and artist and provides quick access to a music store where an MP3 of the song can be purchased.

We’ve described how digital fingerprinting can be used to track PCs across the Internet based on various characteristics that make up a digital fingerprint. That same tracking technology can be used for security, as well. Pirates and Internet users who upload and download illicit material can be identified, tracked and even arrested using the power of digital fingerprinting. And because identification doesn’t rely on an IP address alone, pirates who access the Internet from different places on the same device can still be pinned down.

Obviously, tracking criminals is a noble use of digital fingerprinting — but if this is starting to sound like an invasion of privacy to you, you might be onto something.