MOA already has had some not-so-typical "security" in place -- they have had license-plate recognition cameras at all entrances and exits for a couple years now. The sleek-looking camera heads with two lenses, one for each lane, are fairly easy to notice as you're driving in, mounted about 12' up on poles or a wall. I've always found that sort of technology completely creepy in actual use. A government building, perhaps... but a mall in Minnesota?
How long are the records kept? Why were they installed? Are they sharing information with local police to try to catch people with an outstanding traffic warrant?...or are they just trying to glean some more marketing information? We don't know.
I'd guess they'll take this opportunity to install facial recognition cameras in the transit station, so they can build themselves a database on who takes the light rail in from Cedar/Riverside and where they train their eyes while walking around in Camp Shoot Me. We'll be living in fear in no time, just the way we like it!
He is talking about simple genlocked block text CGs probably made around the mid 1970's that replaced title cards shot via a camera and keyed over the video feed. Before CGs enabled electronic overlay text that was editable in seconds, title cards had to be printed or drawn manually.
He does not mean actual computer graphics, which from the likes of Quantel's Paintbox predates your off-the-shelf SGI 02 by 20 years. A lot happened in that time.
The commercial grandparent of this is the Rotating-plate regenerative air preheater. These have been in use in all fossil-fuel large scale power generation facilities since at least the early 1920's, where even a small economization of the thermal cycle can provide a significant boost of overall efficiency.
Now that residential forced-air furnaces have fairly high efficiencies, the next step was to introduce this technology into homes. Small-scale air preheaters have been required by new construction building codes for many years now in some parts of the country, like Minnesota.
This data center cooling system is just the same thing with a transposed air flow - nothing radical, but there was likely never really a practical use for medium-scale units until recently.
P.S. Have you ever seen the design of the Apple power brick with the interchange prongs/cord? If you haven't. That alone is worth the price difference. Why other laptop manufactures can't make a better power brick is beyond me.
They do this so you have to buy the adapters from Apple. It's a good design, but for a less than benevolent reason. It's just as easy to carry a travel adapter that you can use on other items, you'll need one anyway.
I've had a hard time going more than 18 months or so without an apple adapter failing in one way or another since the G3 days (they were better in the late 90's, actually). In 15 years of use I've never had issues with IBM notebook adapters, ever..
Stern sucked up until recently.. thankfully, they've finally gotten their act together and I'm starting to really enjoy their games. I would rather play some late 80's to mid 90's Williams machines, but game operators have no idea how to service them anyway. If you run across a Medieval Madness on location there is a next to 0% chance that it will actually work perfectly.
We all love to play the 'top rated games'.. but there are still a grip of great pinball machines out there. Dismissing Stern is just voiding yourself of pinball, you are not going to find anything else. Play some Spiderman, Family Guy, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, even T3.. good games. I just wish they'd make original themed machines instead of licensing everything.
>at least vpinmame will save pinball.
good lord that is a scary thought.. talk about missing the point.
..such as the Barco Reference Calibrator (21" CRT, about $6.5k new) has a layer of silk over the CRT face to minimize reflections. Users who actually care about proper color and contrast would never even consider using a glossy screen.
CRT never needed "glossy" -- glossy provides the illusion of better contrast, which LCD sorely needs, at the cost of being a massive distraction.
It is purely consumerism at work! much like widescreen displays; if anything, a VERTICAL display is preferential -- and the common PC-widescreen formats (such as 1920x1200) do not conform to broadcast widescreen standards anyhow.
You only want widescreen for gaming, which you are not doing on a laptop.
Namco Arcades in America were always a joke.. In fact they almost single-handedly killed off most of the mall arcades by buying out many of the existing chains (Aladdin's Castle, Pocket Change, Time-Out, Monte Carlo, etc..). This wouldn't have been such a problem, but Namco does not like to purchase new equipment for their stores as a cost-saving measure, where most of the chains they bought out did. This turned their arcades from a destination to just the place you might go to kill a little bit of time before heading to the theater. Maybe this was their business model, but why go to an arcade when you know you're not going to see anything new? Only the few hardcore DDR and Tekken 5 players ever made the trek away from their Xbox360's to reallifeland after that.
Look at their stores now and nearly half of the games in them are 10-year old gun games and a few driving games.. They also got in trouble by upgrading their DDR machines with PS2's instead of dedicated arcade hardware, as a cost saving measure.
Namco killed their own business (and the Texas-based Tilt chain did as well by making some poor purchasing decisions).. around my area, local companies are starting up new mall arcades that seem to be doing fairly well.
The real money the past couple years was in machines like Derby Owners Club, which cost $128,000 to buy but will pay for itself within 9 mos in a high-traffic location.. That game single-handedly kept Dave & Busters in business.
Slashdot Mirror
MOA already has had some not-so-typical "security" in place -- they have had license-plate recognition cameras at all entrances and exits for a couple years now. The sleek-looking camera heads with two lenses, one for each lane, are fairly easy to notice as you're driving in, mounted about 12' up on poles or a wall. I've always found that sort of technology completely creepy in actual use. A government building, perhaps... but a mall in Minnesota?
...or are they just trying to glean some more marketing information? We don't know.
How long are the records kept? Why were they installed? Are they sharing information with local police to try to catch people with an outstanding traffic warrant?
I'd guess they'll take this opportunity to install facial recognition cameras in the transit station, so they can build themselves a database on who takes the light rail in from Cedar/Riverside and where they train their eyes while walking around in Camp Shoot Me. We'll be living in fear in no time, just the way we like it!
He is talking about simple genlocked block text CGs probably made around the mid 1970's that replaced title cards shot via a camera and keyed over the video feed. Before CGs enabled electronic overlay text that was editable in seconds, title cards had to be printed or drawn manually.
He does not mean actual computer graphics, which from the likes of Quantel's Paintbox predates your off-the-shelf SGI 02 by 20 years. A lot happened in that time.
The commercial grandparent of this is the Rotating-plate regenerative air preheater. These have been in use in all fossil-fuel large scale power generation facilities since at least the early 1920's, where even a small economization of the thermal cycle can provide a significant boost of overall efficiency.
Now that residential forced-air furnaces have fairly high efficiencies, the next step was to introduce this technology into homes. Small-scale air preheaters have been required by new construction building codes for many years now in some parts of the country, like Minnesota.
This data center cooling system is just the same thing with a transposed air flow - nothing radical, but there was likely never really a practical use for medium-scale units until recently.
P.S. Have you ever seen the design of the Apple power brick with the interchange prongs/cord? If you haven't. That alone is worth the price difference. Why other laptop manufactures can't make a better power brick is beyond me.
They do this so you have to buy the adapters from Apple. It's a good design, but for a less than benevolent reason. It's just as easy to carry a travel adapter that you can use on other items, you'll need one anyway.
I've had a hard time going more than 18 months or so without an apple adapter failing in one way or another since the G3 days (they were better in the late 90's, actually). In 15 years of use I've never had issues with IBM notebook adapters, ever..
YMMV, but function can occasionally trump form.
I want to see Sega talk about their REAL roots. This is about the coolest Sega game I've ever seen:
http://www.vimeo.com/610038
and XP was BETTER and FASTER than ME, 98, 95, 3.11... I'll let you finish this one.
Stern sucked up until recently.. thankfully, they've finally gotten their act together and I'm starting to really enjoy their games. I would rather play some late 80's to mid 90's Williams machines, but game operators have no idea how to service them anyway. If you run across a Medieval Madness on location there is a next to 0% chance that it will actually work perfectly.
We all love to play the 'top rated games'.. but there are still a grip of great pinball machines out there. Dismissing Stern is just voiding yourself of pinball, you are not going to find anything else. Play some Spiderman, Family Guy, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, even T3.. good games. I just wish they'd make original themed machines instead of licensing everything.
>at least vpinmame will save pinball.
good lord that is a scary thought.. talk about missing the point.
..such as the Barco Reference Calibrator (21" CRT, about $6.5k new) has a layer of silk over the CRT face to minimize reflections. Users who actually care about proper color and contrast would never even consider using a glossy screen.
CRT never needed "glossy" -- glossy provides the illusion of better contrast, which LCD sorely needs, at the cost of being a massive distraction.
It is purely consumerism at work! much like widescreen displays; if anything, a VERTICAL display is preferential -- and the common PC-widescreen formats (such as 1920x1200) do not conform to broadcast widescreen standards anyhow.
You only want widescreen for gaming, which you are not doing on a laptop.
Namco Arcades in America were always a joke.. In fact they almost single-handedly killed off most of the mall arcades by buying out many of the existing chains (Aladdin's Castle, Pocket Change, Time-Out, Monte Carlo, etc..). This wouldn't have been such a problem, but Namco does not like to purchase new equipment for their stores as a cost-saving measure, where most of the chains they bought out did. This turned their arcades from a destination to just the place you might go to kill a little bit of time before heading to the theater. Maybe this was their business model, but why go to an arcade when you know you're not going to see anything new? Only the few hardcore DDR and Tekken 5 players ever made the trek away from their Xbox360's to reallifeland after that.
Look at their stores now and nearly half of the games in them are 10-year old gun games and a few driving games.. They also got in trouble by upgrading their DDR machines with PS2's instead of dedicated arcade hardware, as a cost saving measure.
Namco killed their own business (and the Texas-based Tilt chain did as well by making some poor purchasing decisions).. around my area, local companies are starting up new mall arcades that seem to be doing fairly well.
The real money the past couple years was in machines like Derby Owners Club, which cost $128,000 to buy but will pay for itself within 9 mos in a high-traffic location.. That game single-handedly kept Dave & Busters in business.