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.