fandomhigh | Basic Computing Class #7 [Tuesday, Period 3, 2/19]

Today's class was being held in the Danger Room, which was set up to look like a room full of television monitors. There were a large number of desks, each with its own computer and keyboard. One of the desks was occupied by a man in a wheelchair, and Mike was standing next to him. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," said Mike. "Please go ahead and take a seat at any empty desk. For today's class, we'll be looking at a completely different computer application. Welcome to the surveillance room of the Montecito resort and casino. Every one of these monitors shows us what is happening on a different camera, from the blackjack tables to the elevators to the pool."

Mike tapped a few keys, and the largest monitor at the front of the room showed a close-up view of gamblers at a roulette table. "In Las Vegas, we refer to security as 'the eye in the sky.' For the casino to make money, it's essential to watch everything going on so that you can catch the cheats. Now, obviously there's too many cameras for a group of people to watch continuously, so these days the video is digitally stored on computer. If something seems suspicious, we can rewind the footage with a few taps of the keyboard and watch it again. Mitch, rewind camera 22 for us, please."

The man in the wheelchair pressed a few buttons, and the large monitor now showed a blackjack table with the game happening in reverse. "If we pause it right here," said Mike, reaching over and tapping a button, "and zoom in, you'll see the man on the right hand side of the table has an extra card up his sleeve."

Mitch picked up his phone. "Security to Pit 7, Blackjack Table 10," he said. The camera footage was put back into real time to show two men in suits whisking the cheating player away.

The monitor switched to another camera focused on a young woman wearing a Montecito name badge. She dialed something on her cell phone and looked straight at the camera just as Mitch's desk phone began to ring. "Nessa, you're on speakerphone," Mitch announced as he hit a button.

"Thanks for the head's up on the card cheat, Mitch. Can you take a closer look at Pit 5, Craps Table 1 when you get a chance? There's some odd characters hanging around there that I don't trust," requested Nessa.

"Sure thing," said Mitch, and the large monitor switched to a split screen view with Nessa on the right and the craps table on the left. "Stay on the line as long as you can, Nessa. We have an audience here today in the surveillance room."

Mike turned to address his students. "Today, we're going to be asking Mitch and Nessa questions about how they rely on computers to do their jobs. I'd like to see one question from each of you. For homework, I'd like you to write up a short summary of what you've learned from them, and your assignment has to be typed up by computer and printed out this time. This is going to count as your midterm, folks."

[~~Please wait for the~~ OCD up! I'm headed to bed, but I'll pick up pings in the morning and should be around for good after 3 PM EST.]

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"Definitely," said Mitch. "There's no way to keep up with everything as it happens, so we have some extra programs to make things easier. There are programs that analyze footage for signs of suspicious activity. There's also another program that analyzes a person's walk, then analyzes the rest of our camera footage and identifies all the other times a person shows up on the property. It's great when you're trying to track someone's movements."

"You mean it's not just one program to do all that?" He blinked. "Seems to me that programs are smart enough too."

Sadly, he was still thinking of everything in terms of the MCP and his friend Tron.

"No, it's a bunch of different programs," explained Mitch. "That way, they can work together and each focus on one unique thing."

"So that makes them better at that one thing," Sora nodded slightly. "So they all work together as a team and then alert the other programs and you when they see something?" He grinned thinking he finally got it.

Edited 2008-02-20 02:43 (UTC)

"Exactly. The humans working in surveillance also work along with them," said Mitch. "If Nessa spots something weird, she can tell us, and we can run that footage through a special filter. Or we can just do this," he added, tapping a few keys. The face of the man rolling the dice at the craps table came up, and a moment later a second screen displayed a copy of his drivers license photo. "Once the computer identifies him, it can check for me if he's had any trouble in the past or if he's in the black book."

"Very cool, seems like they need something like this back home at Hollow Bastion. The only have Tron to run everything over there. What are the names of your programs?"

Mitch starting naming some of the programs, all of which had boring technical names like video IQ, voice ident, iris analyzer, and so on.

That earned him a weird look. "Wow, those names aren't all that cool. Are they at least nice programs?"

"They would have had cool names if I named them!" Mike chimed in.

Mitch looked slightly puzzled. "They're pretty good programs. I've had to deal with worse ones at a previous surveillance job," he answered.

Basic Computing Class #7 [Tuesday, Period 3, 2/19]

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