The Little Geeni

The high Steaks poker Game Has begun; Hollywood watches and waits. As Bit Torrent takes on Apple in a battle for your video downloads.

Earlier this year Apple pushes for and gets removal of DRM (digital rights management) from music and video downloads on Itunes. Just as Bit Torrent goes head to head with Itunes on video downloads.

In February Bit Torrent Inc, the internet company founded by Bram Cohen opened it’s new entertainment web site.

For those who don’t know about Bit Torrent yet, it is a protocol, that can be used free of charge to download large files quickly over the internet using very little band width, It was invented by Bram Cohen. (to learn about bit torrent and how it works go to see the resources box at the end of this article)

Last year Cohen’s company entered into agreements with several movie companies among them Paramount, Warner Brothers, MGM,20th Century Fox and MTV networks. This was the ground work for them to build their business model for a broad market video download service. MTV is a key company because of it’s market demographics.

Apple was quick to follow suit and made it’s own agreements with various movie companies.

This latest effort by Bit Torrent will offer a strong competition to Apple’s Itunes as well as other movie download sites, such as ,Walmart and don’t forget DirectTV and cable on demand services.

What Bit Torrent offers is rental downloads, purchase downloads and some free downloads. It also offers an opportunity for you to publish your own torrents. Very attractive to new producers of video content. This appears to be a move to create a home for original content providers at the Bit Torrent web site.

You might say that is all well and good but how do I watch the content on my big screen TV? Good question.

Two months ago Bit Torrent announced it’s partnership with the company Netgear , which has developed a small inexpensive interface cable box to use to transfer your movies, video and other content from your computer to your TV. Hmm…. sounds a lot like Apple TV.

In an interview on CNBC May 3, 2007 Patrick Lo, the chief executive of Netgear said that Netgear’s plan is to use it’s wireless networks in the home to drive content from the internet to the home TV and make everyone’s home a wireless network.

Not so fast Bit Torrent; last week Apple counters with , what else, video on demand.

London’s financial Times wrote an article indicating that Apple would be offering a video on demand download service in the Fall. And the downloads would be rentals that would cost $2.99. These rental downloads would be good for thirty days and could be shared on one or more of Apple’s devices, Apple TV, iphone or ipod.

This latest move by Apple seems to have placed Apple and Bit Torrent in direct competition with all other video on demand services, which include Amazon’s service, Netflix service and the cable and direct TV companies services.

The gamble would appear to be for Apple and Bit Torrent to drive these other services to a point where they are marginal players and for one of them, that is Bit Torrent or Apple to emerge as the consumer favorite for video and internet content downloads and streaming wirelessly.

A question arises; where is Microsoft in all this? Are they missing the boat again? Or just waiting for the dust to clear?

Hollywood is placing bets on as many power players as it can; hence the agreements with both Bit Torrent and Apple waiting to see who comes out on top.

.htaccess Apple, Battle, Downloads, Torrent, Video

Video used for internal training at Cisco. The basics of Security. Shot a few years ago but still pretty relevant.

Computer Security Cisco, Security, Training, Video

A PC game is a game that is played on a computer just like it is played on a PSP or an Xbox. You just put the game in the system and start playing. If you do not play video games then you shouldn’t be reading this article. A computer game is just like a video game a do not know why other people tend to disagree. In a video game you have all the same things you have a processor that processes the game. Then you have your graphics card or cards. Yes graphics cards are in every gaming system so if you thought a computer was different then video games then you are wrong. The only reason that computers will get better graphics is because video games are limited to their upgrades and that is why you will get booted out of games because you are not supposed to upgrade a system that is already upgraded enough.

The first computer and video games were made back in the day around the 70s. So if you thought that the first games were Atari and pong think again. I think the most fun games of the day would have had to of been the Mario brothers games. Those games were always fun and they always kept me busy and doing something. If I had nothing to do I would always get into trouble or end up breaking something that I wasn’t suppose to do. Like I was playing around once at my grandmas and I just got done playing that video game and I was like playing rock baseball in the backyard with my cousin and he pitched me a big ole round rock and I hit that sucker right through the glass window in the shed and man I kept that a secret for the longest time.

The end of the 70s is when you were seeing the first home based video game systems and systems that you could plug into the wall and start playing all you had to do was hook it up to the TV and the plug in the wall and you could start playing.

Soon came to be the PC the personal computer. That soon became the weapon of the future and everyone would soon be using one of these. If you didn’t have a computer by the 90s you were still considered to be living in the dark ages.

There are all kinds of different games that you could have played. You had fighting. Shooting, shooter, racing, I mean you had all the games that you could think of to play and people chose to get computers and start playing computer games.

Since the first video game system and video game was made the demand for video games and their components has grown enormously. If you do not have some kind of system today then I do not know where you are or where you are living. Today every person should at least have one computer in their house and one video game. If you don’t then you already got sick of every game and system or just simply cannot afford the time to play them.

Computer Games Evolution, Games, Look, Video

Modern-day psychological problems are related to compulsive playing of computer and video games. That is a fact! Modern societies are now struggling to meet the new face of addiction. Virtual games such as computer and video games seem to be perfectly harmless. They even managed to convince parents that they provide their kids with safer and more enriching ways of spending free time. For this reason, the underlying effects of playing these games have sneakily gotten worse. Since they provide fun, excitement and thrill, the common factors that are related to promote addiction, kids are most vulnerable to be affected with compulsive gaming disorder. Since this form of disorder is less likely to be recognized and are more often not considered serious, they tend to develop into video game addiction or computer game addiction. The ignorance in handling and controlling the new trend of addiction in modern societies only made things worse, for affected virtual game players.

Virtual and simulated video and computer games are originally meant to be a past time or a therapeutic way of passing free time from work or school. However, developing a sense of dependency to this activity is one of the modern societies lurking problems. While these games are supposed to be harmless, many are still compelled to abuse the good feeling that playing this games bring, as in deep sense of satisfaction and sense of power by living out a virtual role that is entirely different from his own real-life roles. A person who is socially withdrawn can live out an aggressive personality through the realms of these games. In a way, playing the game compensates or whatever a person may be lacking, social wise. This can be helpful, but once it starts replacing the role of friends, work and family to a person’s life, there must be a form of intervention to convince the person to succumb to psychological evaluations and treatments to prevent the onset of video game addiction or computer game addiction.

Gaming addiction has become a modern-day phenomena, its exact cause is yet to be determined. Similarly, there are still issues regarding the grounds on which the conditions can be diagnosed. What doctors do is make separate diagnosis, as to finding and devising treatment to the behavioral patterns that relates to video game addiction or computer game addiction.

The seriousness of the issues caused by computer game addiction and video game addiction was even claimed to have created a new face of addiction in modern-day societies. Since this kind of addiction roots from seemingly harmless sources, what leads to addiction is the people’s abuse to the effects or benefits that they bring. Since no one will ever prevent using computer these days, at work or in school, theorists predict that this kind of disorder will be much harder to manage. After all, no one has been jailed for spending too much time playing computer games and no one has been condemned in exhausting himself to death, reaching the highest levels of online games. None yet!

Computer Games Addiction, Games, Modern, Video

When Nintendo games first came out they were simple joystick and button controls, showing 2 dimensional graphics. Such games as Space Invaders and Pacman swept the world by force making their first appearance in arcades then eventually to the customers own home. To think Playstation games made only twenty years ago required a machine the dimensions of an occasional table to be able to run them can now be played on mobile telephones.

With further developments in console systems and PCs Playstation games now have a number of platforms, from the hi tech Sony Playstation 3 capable of running games that contain virtual worlds to the highly interactive Nintendo Wii with motion controls. However there is one platform that continues to get better over time, instead of becoming redundant. This is of course the ceaselessly upgradeable personal Computer ).

But where are we now with current 3D video? 3D rendering is now able to be done in seconds and seconds rather then days and weeks that it might have taken just a couple of years back. This technology is 3D glasses. 3D glasses for those who have not heard about them are glasses with a red hint on one eye and blue hint on the other. This allows different colored photographs to be seen by different eyes making a 3D affect like none else. You may be flying a spaceship around terrain, fighting battle droids in an arena, or maybe playing the classical game of snake all right in front of your eyes. This is technology which has been about for years, being employed in cinemas and Imac’s world wide.

3D Glasses
3D Glasses

Computer Games Computer, extend, Game, Sales, Video

From time to time, video games have been criticized by parents’ groups, psychologists, politicians, and some religious organizations for allegedly glorifying violence, cruelty, and crime and exposing children to these elements. It is particularly disturbing to some that some allow children to act out crimes (for example, the Grand Theft Auto series), and reward them for doing so. Concerns that children who play violent video games may have a tendency to act more aggressively on the playground have led to voluntary rating systems adopted by the industry, such as the ESRB rating system in the United States and the PEGI rating system in Europe, that are aimed at educating parents about the types of games their children should or should not be playing (or are begging to play).

Most studies, however, reach the conclusion that violence in them is not causally linked with aggressive tendencies. This was the conclusion of a 1999 study by the U.S. government, prompting Surgeon General David Satcher to say, “…we clearly associate media violence to aggressive behavior, but the impact was very small compared to other things. Some may not be happy with that, but that’s where the science is.” This was also the conclusion of a meta-analysis by psychologist Johnathan Freedman, who reviewed over 200 published studies and found that the majority did not find a causal link.

Critics of movies, television, and books as a group look down on video games as an inferior form of entertainment[citation needed]. This is probably because of the observation that most of them have very little plot and even less character development[citation needed], which may or may not be true. A frequent counterargument is that this is like complaining that a game of football does not contain much plot or character development, and that although some of them include a narrative, they are really about acting in and against a virtual world, which is not primarily based upon passively seeing and hearing. Another point of video games to the movies which during the silent era were also considered mere entertainment.

Computer Games Computer, From, Games, Ishopvideogame, Video

Back then when I was a kid, my mother was always angry when I play video games too much. Well, I cannot blame her, back then life was tough if the only thing you know were how to play video games.

Today, the story is different now. You don’t need to feel inferior anymore if the only thing you know is how to play video games because today you can get paid to play video games. I mean not just get paid, you can get a salary as much as what MBA graduates earn.

1. The Catch

The only catch is in order to become a beta game tester, you need to understand some technical know-how of the video games and console you play. That’s the only catch. So start now with reading some game magazines and websites.

2. Game Review

You can start your gaming career at the comfort of your home with writing game review. If your reviews are good, some gaming companies will be interested in hiring you. Start a blog and tell your friends or post it on gaming forum. This will quickly attract the attention of some gaming companies.

One trick I like to do is to write an Amazon review. Every time there is a new release, I will buy the game, play it in a week and write pros and cons at Amazon website.

3. Writing A Guide

A lot of people will love to pay if you can show them how to complete the game. Many will prefer to read the solution rather than wandering aimlessly for hours.

Just take a look at world of warcraft guides online; people all over the world are willing to pay money to get this guide.

All online games are good subject to turn into ebook. You can sell it on Ebay and get cash this weekend.

Computer Games Beta, Computer, Games, Paid, Play, Testing, Video

So you love gaming. You have played just about every console game you can think of, you have gone through a wide variety of computer games and beaten them all, you eat, sleep, and live gaming. With your personal live revolving around gaming, you long to find a career that will allow you to use your love and knowledge of gaming to make a living. Well, there are hundreds of different jobs out there in the video and computer gaming industry, and you can land one – if you have the right skills. Here are the top five video and computer gaming jobs and a bit about each one:

1. Game designers – these are the people that actually design the game. This is a very detail-oriented position, and this person is responsible for the overall concept of a new game from the beginning story line to the end story of the game. Designers need special training to do their job, such as computer programming and software design.

2. Artists – these are the people that responsible for everything that the player sees in the game, such as characters, backgrounds, items, and animals. Artists are the ones that give light to the designer’s ideas and concepts. They need special training in computer animated design, 3D design, and other software programming that relates to video and computer gaming.

Click Here To Become A Game Tester Today!

3. Sound designers – these are the people who give voices and music to your favorite video and computer games. They design all of the sounds that a gamer hears. Sound designers need special training in audio engineering as well as basic computer hardware and software skills. It is also helpful to have experience with designing different musical works.

4. Programmers – these are the people who actually plan out and write the video game software. They integrate the artwork, story, and sounds all into one program so that it comes out into a visual and audio experience that gamers will enjoy. Programmers need skills and training in program languages, like C ++, and should have good computer skills and plenty of computer experience and training.

5. Game Testers – these are the people that play games for a living. While their jobs sound like a dream come true for gamers, they do not make as much money as other gaming jobs, like programmers. Testers will push new games to the limits and log any bugs or glitches that they come across. Game testers will need special training in computers, such as languages or basic computer hardware and software skills, as well as good communication skills.

While these are the top 5 gaming industry positions, there are still hundreds of other gaming jobs that are out there. But, for those of you that feel the irresistible pull of the game tester field, head over to http://www.becomeagametester.com and take the course that will show you everything you need to do to become a great video game tester.

Click Here To Become A Game Tester Today!

Computer Games Computer, Game, Jobs, Video

Video games have been a significant force in society and one of the most popular leisure, more or less a solitary pursuits in those days of the late ’70′s and early 80′s that relied on graphic improvements and better ways of shooting the enemy. There were games like Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision, Sega and Nintendo. With the rise of the Internet and online games however, lots of things changed, including the ability to download games and playing online games, making games a more of social activity, with lots of players, or opponents playing with each other from the different corner of the world thus making people from the different parts of the world come closer and interact with each other while playing.

It was Magnavox and their “Odyssey” system in 1972, which were the earliest video games that included twelve simple games with graphic overlays. It was very simple and needed lots of improvement. Seeking the opportunity Nolan Bushnell along with Al Alcorn, the founder of Atari created Pong complete with built in paddles, and a speaker and released it in the market after one year, which came out to be a great success. At the same time another video game Atari dominated the market. Among the other video games that were famous worldwide were Pac Man, the yellow blob that ate up dots and avoided squid-like ghosts, Space Invaders, Super Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and other classics.

With the running time industry was trying for more efficient system and as a result the entire industry adopted the implementation of the microprocessor due to which these systems produced groundbreaking and innovative graphical and auditory effects that had never been seen before. Millions of dollars were spent on video arcade machines and on home video game systems. Atari’s VCS/2600 system still dominated the market throughout 1982, when the gaming market experienced a crash due to the loss of public interest in video game specific consoles, and sales dropped.

The video game history took a new turn with the end of the reign of Atari and with the two innovations in the year 1984. The two innovations were reduction in cost of Dynamic RAM (DRAM) chips, which allowed more memory, and the production of higher power 8-bit processors, which lowered the prices of the previous chips. Sega and Nintendo of Japan entered the console market and would battle over the next five years for dominance. Recently in this advance age of technology where the gaming market is saturated with hi-tech online computer games battle for domination is still in existence and this could be seen between PlayStation 2, the X box and the Game Cube.

Computer Games Computer, From, Game, Journey, Online, Video

By Jose Allan Tan

Threats of security continue to pervade the global market since September 11. Bombings and threats promising mayhem and destruction had led to a surge in investments around security and surveillance systems. This is fueling the change in how we capture, store, and monitor video.

According to Shivanu Shukla, an industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan “There has been strong interest in being able to remotely monitor surveillance cameras, run video analytics, and integrate surveillance with other physical security systems.”

Shukla notes that network-based video surveillance systems are becoming popular. Frost estimates the video surveillance market to grow from $992.1 million in 2006 to $3956.7 million in 2013.

Analog vs. digital

Analog video surveillance systems consists of analog cameras connected via cables to multiplexers and in-turn connected to monitors and key boards. But what happens when the area that needs to be monitored is a significant distance away and there is a need to record 7×24?

Network surveillance solutions allow existing analog cameras to be connected to a video server, which is connected to the network, and monitored by any computer that is on the network, or the existing control room.

“Storage of the video can be done by network video recorders (NVRs), which can be anywhere on the network, as opposed to digital video recorders (DVRs), which need to be placed close to the cameras or the switcher/multiplexer. In a complete network surveillance solution, network cameras are used to connect directly to the IP network, without the need for an external encoder,” says Shukla.

Video surveillance deployments in Asia are mostly analog based due in part to the market’s price sensitivity. But this is changing as the security threats continue to remain high on radar of both commercial and the public.

Kiran Kumar, a Frost Research Associate, notes that government and transportation sectors are spearheading video surveillance deployments, with large projects for airports, city surveillance, and other critical infrastructure surveillance.

“Fast developing physical infrastructure such as airports, seaports, highways, and rail networks is a key driving force for the strong adoption for video surveillance systems,” says Kumar.

There are three main factors limiting the continuing growth of analog video surveillance systems:

Cost: Set-ups and installation costs of traditional coaxial or fiber-based cabling for analog video systems over large areas is very high. Large-scale projects for city surveillance and monitoring of harbors and ports take a significant role in effecting change to network surveillance.

Scalability: Despite DVRs having improved the recording quality of analog cameras, there is still the physical restriction of its installation near the analog matrix.

Flexibility: Integration of analog video surveillance systems with other systems can be cumbersome. Analog surveillance systems are limited to centralized video analytics, which requires additional hardware, cabling and is difficult to scale.

Benefits of network surveillance

Digital technology is helping extend the capability of surveillance beyond what can be achieved with traditional systems.

Technology now allows us to monitor an area from any location in the world in real-time without any significant investment.

Storage of video can be done on NVRs that can be anywhere on the network. How much video we can store digitally is limited only by the amount of hard disk space. And because the video traverses through the network, backups can be done remotely.

Scalability of network surveillance systems is easy and inexpensive. Network cameras can be connected to the network without rewiring.

With network surveillance systems, intelligence can be distributed either directly at the camera or encoder, or centralized on the NVR or a separate server.

Network surveillance systems are cheaper to build and maintain with reusability of existing IP network infrastructure, highly scalable with little incremental costs, low maintenance costs, and ability to reuse existing legacy surveillance cameras and other display and monitoring equipment as key factors for adoption of digital surveillance techniques.

Limitations of going digital

Not everything is bright and rosy. Due to its dependence on the network, security teams will need the support of the IT department.

“The key challenge to adoption is to get the security and IT teams to adopt network surveillance. Existing network infrastructure makes the proposition of network surveillance stronger. However, organizations where such infrastructure is less developed would be slow to move to network surveillance,” says Shukla.

He concedes that network surveillance adoption is changing the dynamics between the security personnel and the IT teams within enterprises, hindering its adoption rate. The introduction of network surveillance implies the participation of the IT division in security matters.

“Security personnel are typically more conservative and not open to major changes in their environments. Network surveillance adoption would depend on the successful interactions and communication between the two teams within an enterprise,” notes Shukla.

Although Frost & Sullivan expects the trend towards network surveillance to be strong, adoption of analog system will continue to grow as well, albeit slower than network surveillance deployments.

“While remote access, scalability, and distributed intelligence are the key drivers for network video surveillance, price, perceived reliability, and conservative nature of security teams to change and adopt new technologies will hinder adoption,” says Kumar.

Traditionally, cameras have been the point of entry for vendors into the market; subsequently their offerings include DVRs, NVRs, encoders, and software, together with switchers and multiplexers.

Increasingly, due to the emergence of network surveillance solutions, there is an effort from vendors to approach the surveillance solution from the NVR or DVR front, by offering better management software, virtual matrix systems and video content analytics as a solution package.

As traction for network video surveillance picks up in Asia Pacific, providing complete end-to-end surveillance solutions is expected to become a key to succeed in the market.

Computer Security Asia, Networkbased, Shift, Surveillance, Toward, Understanding, Video