Digital Photo ID Cards

Digital Photo ID Cards By Frank White Q: What do you need to make a Digital Photo ID Card? A: Making digital photo ID cards typically requires several components all working together. 1. You need a computer on which you run the photo ID badge software. You cannot print the cards on a PVC card printer without a computer – the printer can't perform anything without the computer. 2. You need software and it must: a) Offer a database to store the names and personal information of the people for whom you want to issue badges. b) Provide a way to integrate image capture with the database – not only import images, but associate the images with specific database records. c) Provide a way to design and edit badges. d) Send badges from the computer to a card printer. Badging software, like other business applications, comes in a variety of "flavors" – from low-end to high-end. That is, in addition to performing the simple processes described above, the application may come with many other "features" which enhance the usability and functionality of the application. Features might include requiring a secure log-on, allowing the user to add, delete, or edit database fields and create or print reports, etc. 3. You need a PVC card printer to print the badges. PVC (polyvinylchloride) is the same material that your white plastic household plumbing pipes are made out of. It is porous enough to allow colored inks to be absorbed into the surface of the plastic using a "dye sublimation" process, yet durable enough to last years. The PVC printer allows you to print a photo ID badge directly to a plastic card. The non-digital process required cutting and pasting an instant photo and inserting it into a laminated pouch which must then be sealed by sending it through a heat laminator. 4. You need a digital camera or other "input" device. Your PC and software must allow you to: a) Plug in a camera. b) Capture the image through the software. More versatile systems will allow you to capture portraits through video cameras, digital cameras, scanners, or by importing from a file –an "import from file" feature allows someone to send a picture to you by email as a file attachment, which you can then import into the database. 5. Additional hardware may be required, such as a video capture board for certain video cameras, tape backup device, UPS (uninterrupted power supply), etc. Video capture boards, for example, are installed in a PCI or AGP expansion slot on your PC's motherboard. The camera usually plugs directly into these boards. Special lighting may need to be set up where you take portrait pictures. If you want to incorporate fingerprints and signatures in your database and badge, then additional image capture devices will be required for them. 6. Consumables are also part of the package. You will need blank or pre-printed PVC cards and printer ribbons (usually in rolls which print from 250-350 cards per).

how to disable unwanted programs at startup

You probably need only half the programs that have been set to be loaded at startup. Having too many programs drastically slows down your startup. It’s very easy to specify which ones you want to start automatically. It’s wise to leave all the anti virus and system tools. Here’s what you need to do: Go to Run from the Start menu Open “msconfig” (without the quotes!) and click OK In the windows that opens, choose the Startup tab Make your choices by unchecking the programs you don’t need to load at startup Hit OK and restart …

Hide Drives and Partitions

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Hide Drives and Partitions ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: NOTICE } THIS tricks is for advance user not for normal user who just using comp for fun . this work hard do this on your own risk . Do you have data on a partition or hard drive that you don't want tampered with or easily accessible to other users? Well, you can hide any drive/partition in Windows XP, NT, and 2000. That means that they won't show up in Explorer or My Computer. If you want access to that drive from your user account you should create a desktop shortcut before proceeding. Once hidden, you can still access by typing the drive letter and a colon in Start/Run—for example, "D:" will bring up a folder of the contents on your D drive. The easiest way with Win XP is to use the TweakUI power toy from Mcft. Go to Start/Run and type in "tweakui" (without the quotes). Go to My Computer/Drives and uncheck the drive/partition(s) you want hidden. Click "Apply" or "OK" when finished. If you have XP but not Tweak UI you can download it here... http://www.Mcft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx For Win NT, 2000, and XP you can use the following Registry edit: *Be sure to back up the Registry before proceeding http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/401 Open the Registry Editor by going to Start/Run and typing in "regedit" (without the quotes). Find your way to... HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mcft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies Click on "Explorer". Double-click the "NoDrives" key in the right column. If you don't find a "NoDrives" registry key, just right-click in the right pane and choose "New/DWORD Value" then name the key "NoDrives". You'll see a value like "0000 00 00 00 00". This is where the fun starts. The four sets of double zeros (after the "0000") are where you'll enter the values for the drive/partitions. Now, stay with me on this—it's not as complicated as it sounds: The first column is for drives A-H, the second for I-P, the third for Q-X, and the fourth for Y-Z. The values for each drive are as follows: 1 - A I Q Y 2 - B J R Z 4 - C K S 8 - D L T 16 - E M U 32 - F N V 64 - G O W 80 - H P X So, let's say you want to hide drive D. In the first column you would put "08". For drive K you would put "04" in the second column. But what if you want to hide more than one drive in a column? Simply add the values together: D+E = 8+16 = 24. So in the first column you would put "24". Still baffled? If you have XP then go get TweakUI and save yourself the math. Whichever method you use, you can rest easy knowing that the files on that drive or partition are less accessible to other users.

enable fast user swithcing

User switching is the fastest way to switch to a different user account. This lets you have several accounts logged in at the same time, but only one of them interacts with the keyboard, mouse, etc. and is open, while the rest continue to run open programs. To enable fast user switching: 1. Go to Control Panel and click on user accounts. 2. Click the User accounts icon in the Control Panel icons section to open the User accounts window. 3. Click “change the way users log on and off” 4. Check the box “Use Fast …

......................... ,,, Data Capacity of CDs [Tutorial] ,,,, ......................... Abstract You can fit on a S/VCD without overburning: - approx. 735 MB of MPEG data onto a 74min/650MB disc - approx. 795 MB of MPEG data onto an 80min/700MB disc You can fit on a CD-ROM without overburning: - approx. 650 MB of data onto a 74min/650MB disc - approx. 703 MB of data onto an 80min/700MB disc ---------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction Let us ignore for now the terms of megabyte for CD capacity and try to understand how the data is stored on a CD. As well all know, the data is stored digitally as binary data. This means, however the actual information is actually kept on the disc, this information is in the form of "1"s and "0"s. Physically, the information on a CD is as pits on a thin sheet of metal (aluminium). An a CD-R disc, the data is physically on an organic dye layer which simulates the metal layer on a real pressed CD. ---------------------------------------------------------------- How is the information structured Now, on the CD, the information isn't just organised from beginning to end willy-nilly. Otherwise, it would be really hard to find a useful piece of information on the CD. Rather, the information is organised in sectors. Consider a sector as like a page in a book. Just like you are able to quickly find something in a book if you know the page number, you can quickly find something on a CD if you know the sector number. Now, remember that the CD was original made to hold audio data. It was decided, that the CD would would 75 sectors per second of audio. Although I cannot guess where this number comes from, it is quite appropriate for the audio CD. It means that you can "seek" an audio CD accurately to 1/75th of a second -- which is more than enough for consumer purposes. Now, with this in mind, we can work out the total data capacity of user data for 1 sector. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The total data capacity of user data of 1 sector on a CD CD audio uses uncompressed PCM stereo audio, 16-bit resolution sampled at 44.1 kHz. Thus 1 second of audio contains: 16 bits/channel * 2 channels * 44100 samples/second * 1 second = 1411200 bits = 176400 bytes Since there are 75 sectors per second 1 sector = 176400 bytes / 75 = 2352 bytes One sector on a CD contains 2352 bytes max. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The concept of different MODES and FORMS of burning Now, audio CD was well and good, but the medium would become much more useful if you could store other data on the disc as well. This became to be know as CD-ROM of course. Now, the audio-CD uses the ENTIRE sector for audio data. However, for CD-ROMs this caused a problem. Simply, CDs and the CD reading mechanisms were not 100% faultless. That is, errors (indeed frequent errors) could be made during the reading. For audio CDs, this does not matter as much as you could simply interpolate from the adjacent audio samples. This will obviously NOT DO for data CDs. A single bit error could lead to a program being unexecutable or ruin an achive file. Thus, for CD-ROMs, part of each sector is devoted to error correction codes and error detection codes. The CD-R FAQ has the details, but in effect, only 2048 bytes out of a total of 2352 bytes in each sector is available for user data on a data CD. This burning mode is either MODE1 or MODE2 Form1. ---------------------------------------------------------------- MODE2 Form2 sectors of VCDs and SVCDs Now, for VCDs and SVCDs, the video tracks do not necessarily require the robust error correction as normal data on a CD-ROM. However, there is still some overhead per sector that is used for something other than video data (e.g., sync headers). S/VCDs video tracks are burnt in what is called MODE2 Form2 sectors. In this mode, only 2324 bytes out of a total of 2352 bytes in each sector is available for user data. This is MUCH MORE than for CD-ROMs, but still less per sector than audio CD. ---------------------------------------------------------------- The disc capacities of CD-ROMs, audio-CDs and VCDs Now, obviously what ultimately determines the capacity of a disc is the total number of sectors it contains. This is similar to the total number of pages in a blank exercise book (if you recall the book analogy). The secondary determinant is the burning mode of the disc. For audio CDs, it is as if you could fill each page from top to bottom with audio data as the entire sector is used for audio data. For CD-ROMs, it is as if you need to first rule a margin and then leave the bottom part of each page for footnotes (headers + ECC + EDC). The amount of text you can actually write per page is then less due to these other constraints. For S/VCDs, we still need to rule a margin on the page, but we don't have to worry about the footnotes (headers). We can fit MORE text than a CD-ROM, but less than an audio-CD. Now remember, 1 second on a CD = 75 sectors. Thus: - 74 min CD = 333,000 sectors - 80 min CD = 360,000 sectors Data capacity in Mb for an audio-CD 74 min = 333,000 sectors * 2352 bytes / sector = 783216000 bytes = 746.9 Mb 80 min = 360,000 sectors * 2352 bytes / sector = 846720000 bytes = 807.5 Mb Data capacity in Mb for a CD-ROM 74 min = 333,000 sectors * 2048 bytes / sector = 681984000 bytes = 650.4 Mb 80 min = 360,000 sectors * 2048 bytes / sector = 737280000 bytes = 703.1 Mb Data capacity in Mb for a S/VCD 74 min = 333,000 sectors * 2324 bytes / sector = 773892000 bytes = 738.0 Mb 80 min = 360,000 sectors * 2324 bytes / sector = 836640000 bytes = 797.9 Mb ---------------------------------------------------------------- Conclusions As you can see, the often quoted capacities of 650MB and 700MB refer to CD-ROM capacities. Due to the fact that S/VCDs use a different burning mode where MORE of each sector is available as user data, the relatively capacities are HIGHER. Now, since S/VCDs are not composed of PURELY video tracks and have some unavoidable overheads, the actually total capacity left for video tracks is a few Mb less for each disc (about 735 Mb for 74min discs and 795 Mb for 80min discs). This is where the often quoted capacities of 740MB and 800MB come from. They are quite accurate. All these capacities are available BEFORE overburning. Overburning is where you burn MORE sectors than the disc is rated for. If you overburn, you can typically achieve about 1-2 minutes of additional capacity (depending on your drive and media). ----------------------------------------------------------------