Global Threat - Blogging about the Internet + Technology + Computer Security + Gadgets + Common PC issues, and reviews. *Use The Archive List To Find More Posts*
I read on Wired.com that Andrew Milner, chairman of Aces Wild, an Australian IT company recently developed a RFID enabled poker table that allows him to track every card in each players hand every deal. The RFID enabled poker table cost Milner over $7,000 dollars and took him over three months to make.
Right now most televised poker games show each players cards through a tiny camera hidden in the poker table. Andrew Milner's idea is going to make televising poker games a lot easier and more detailed. With this technology it allows you to be able to automatically calculate the drawing odds before a player even receives a card, which is basically card counting, but only the televised audience will see the odds.
Since RFID tags are so thin, theirs no problem placing them onto playing cards. The problem comes with security. RFID tags are not secure and if some one could figure out which RFID number corresponds with each card and could be near the table with a RFID reader, then they could know which cards where on the table. This could be a problem with televised games that have live audiences.
The entire card reading process is controlled by a piece of software that Milner wrote. The above picture is the applications screen used to setup the games. The picture below is of the video files used. Theirs a video file for each and every possible hand. When some one has that hand the corresponding video is then played onto the video screen.
A TFS (Team Foundation Server) is a server software developed by Microsoft that allows developers to make the process of developing and managing video studio projects more efficient and easier. Microsoft first developed this software for their programmers that crank out and maintain large amounts of complex code. Now their offering the same software they use to other developers out there. This software includes features that will aid developers in defect tracking, work item tracking, version control, build management, data collection, and reporting. The developers “Team Project Portal” access all these features, which also is the central point of communication.
Setting up your own hosted team foundation server will probably just give you a headache. To begin with you need Windows Server 2003 with SP1 or Windows Server 2008 just to run the software. Second, the TFS software costs around $3,000 US dollars. Third, the Microsoft server must have IIS 6 or 7 and SQL Server 2005 SP1 or later. On the bright side it does support both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
A good option for most people is to look into tfs hosting from a trusted company such as Phase2.com, a trusted SaaS (software as a service) solution. Their IT people are among the best in the world that deal with high-end business software. You’re guaranteed to get a good hosted tfs through them.
Ever wanted to create the matrix effect on your PC? It's easier than you think. You can easily create the effect in MS-DOS with a few simple DOS commands. To make this effect your going to need to create the follow Matrix batch file:
@echo off cls color 02 :a echo %random%%random%%random%% random%%random%%random%%r andom% %random%%random%%random%% random%%random%%random%%r andom% %random%%random%%random%% random%%random%%random%%r andom% %random%%random%%random%% random%%random%%random%%r andom% goto a
Be sure to put all those %random% on one line, instead of on four lines like I have it. All you have to do is enter the above code into notepad, with the %random% all on one line correction, then save the file as matrix.bat, do not use the .txt extension, use the .bat extension. You may need to go to save as type 'all files' first before you can save as a .bat or you can just rename it with that extension after you save it.
Now that you have the matrix.bat file you now need to create a shortcut. You can do this by right click the matrix.bat file then clicking create shortcut. Now you must right click the shortcut and go to properties Font Tab Raster Font: 10x18. Then go to the Layout Tab and set the width to 800 and height to 250 then click 'ok'. Then open the shortcut and you will now see the matrix effect just like in the video below.
Greeting Card Factory Deluxe 7.0 is the latest version of the popular card making software. If you haven't tried this software yet then you should. This software is designed to easily make store-quality professional looking greeting cards right at home on your PC. The software's interface is very user friendly and you have over 24,000 pre-built high quality greeting cards you can use or you can add your own personal touch to. This software comes with the largest collection of greeting cards ever assembled onto one piece of software. You also get over 90,000 graphics that you can use on your greeting cards.
Greeting Card Factory 7.0 also comes with a lot more new features such as an enhanced card browser interface, Windows Vista compatability, new drag & drop text effects, ability to easily create video greeting cards, and much more.
To create a greeting card it just takes three simple steps. The first step is to choose a holiday or occasion you want to make a card for. The second step is to select the card style you want and add a personalized message. The third and final step is to print the card. This software will print the greeting card out on any printer, perfectly, every time.
High definition radio is a new technology that allows us to tune into digital radio absolutely free. Currently there are tens of thousands of digital radio stations broadcasting in every major city. I've found a bunch of Texas High Definition Radio stations I never even knew existed before. Digital broadcasting works much like wireless internet, because it's code is sent in binary format. Only those who have a new HD Radio Receiver can tune into these stations.
Another benefit you get when you have a high definition radio is the increased audio quality. Digital stations sound better than CD quality, FM stations sound like CD quality, and AM stations sound like FM audio quality. Not only do you get better sound quality but most HD receivers support iPod tagging. This feature allows you to find the name of any song you hear on the radio through your HD radio receiver. You'll never be left wondering the name and artist of a good song you hear on the radio. You can add these songs to a playlist and the next time you sync your iPod with your PC you will be able to easily download the songs either from the iTunes store or another provider. You can also view the playlist in your iPod. Every song you tag is saved in a playlist.
Bandwidth limits and their meters are now widely believed to be against the law. Comcast has been regulating the bandwidth of it's customers to 250GB per month since October 2008. Many people believe this is just a scam for Comcast to quickly rake in a bunch of money from it's customers. Most households use about 250GB a month, and a lot of people are going to be surprised come January 5th when Comcast releases it's bandwidth meter. It may monitor all incoming and outgoing traffic but what about traffic caused by packet collisions, dropped packets, DoS attacks, DDoS attacks, trojans, worms, vulnerability scans, port scans, pings, advertisements, and unexpected intensive website graphics. This is the kind of traffic we can't control. In my opinion Comcast's customers are being taken advantage of as well as At&t's customers which I've heard have a even lower, 150GB bandwidth limit.
Have you ever heard a song on the radio and wish you knew the name of it? By using iTunes Tagging you can find out the name of any song you hear on the radio!
The trick to using iTunes tagging with your iPod is that you must have an HD digital radio that supports it, like the Jensen JiMS 525i. So you have your iPod docked in your Jensen JiMS 525i, and you hear a song that you want to know the name to, all you have to do is simply hit the "tag" button. The HD receiver will then help your iPod save the name of the song and get more information about it. The songs hit "tag" on will then show up in the playlist named "tagged". Next time you sync your iPod to your computer then you will be able to access the information so that you can then download the song. It's as easy as that.
High definition digital radios are also good to have no only because they allow you to tag songs on your iPod, but also because they crystal-clear sound is absolutely amazing. My HD radio made me start listening to some of my local FM radio stations again, the sound is that good. On my old analog radio the sound was so bad I decided to go completely digital and use CD disks. Now that I have my HD digital radio though I don't need CD's I get the same quality when I listen to local FM stations. I also pick up a lot more channels. Try out some of the new music stations on your new HD radio, and give iPod tagging a try.
The picture of the computer above is the world's first pre-built super-computer made by NVIDIA (an American company) for PC users. It's called the Tesla supercomputer, and it's 250x faster than current personal computers. It's expected to cost about $4,000 dollars and it is going to revolutinize the way scientists, engineers, render farms, and medical professionals carry out their work. This super computer will be able to easily process MRI scans faster than most current super-computers used for MRI scans. It will be able to tell patients whether they have a tumor in just hours instead of days. Scientists will use this super-computer to find cures for diseases that plague the world such as cancer and malaria. Supercomputing is already used to find cures for diseases much faster than traditional methods, and now it will be more affordable to do research this way than ever before. NVIDIA has partnered with Dell computers to mass-produce this system as soon as possible to the general consumer market, which will eventually help make these super-computers even more affordable.
Finding old friends or relatives you've lost contact with is now easier than ever before. If your having trouble finding some one in the U.S. the easiest way to track them down is by using a Nationwide Phone Lookup service. These services often access phone records to do a reverse lookup of a phone number for you. Phone records include a lot of personal information such as the full name, current address, phone numbers, and the customer's family members names.
The IBM Model 350 was the world's very first hard drive ever made, and was exclusively made to be used by the IBM 305 RAMAC computer that IBM started delivering to businesses back in 1956. The hard drive and the computer were mainly used by financial institutions for business accounting. The hard drive was built using 50 discs that were 24-inches in diameter and all together they stored about 4.4MB of data. The discs of the hard-drive spun at a maximum of 1,200RPM and the drives were able to be read at up to 8,800 bits per second, but that excludes the access time of approximately one second.
