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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: cmr on Tue, 19 January 2010, 09:10:14

Title: space invaders!
Post by: cmr on Tue, 19 January 2010, 09:10:14

i've been bored at PDX waiting on a standby flight and I happened to notice a keycap missing on one of the united airlines gate agents' boards -- the stem underneath was of the space invaders type (who made those? NMB?)

airports seem to be one of the few places with large installations of mechanical boards. I wonder how often their equipment shows up in surplus.

no pictures; I didn't want to get called in for the special search protocol.

Title: space invaders!
Post by: spolia optima on Tue, 19 January 2010, 17:48:04

(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=7423&stc=1&d=1263943643)

Leave the keycap, geekhacker. You're chasing rabbits. Every....*puff* day, some half-million caps go missing. You'd assume that an hitek would show up once in a while, but no. Every NMB reported is... eventually... debunked. Every... last one of them a Sun, a peerless, or an M if one is lucky. The HiTek is nothing but a fairy tail. Geekhacker, you will... *puff*... need to accept the truth some day. Little green switches do...not...exist.

Title: space invaders!
Post by: cmr on Wed, 20 January 2010, 18:06:01

gate E2 at Portland International

the truth is out there

Title: space invaders!
Post by: cmr on Wed, 20 January 2010, 19:35:26

nah i got out on the third flight of the day. i was already at proper powell's downtown earlier in the trip.

Title: space invaders!
Post by: quadibloc on Wed, 20 January 2010, 21:25:30

Well, I did notice - on the elitekeyboards web site, I think - that there is a claim that because high-quality keyboards promote accurate data entry, there are airlines that insist on Topre.

Title: space invaders!
Post by: Oqsy on Thu, 21 January 2010, 02:59:23

(http://i400.photobucket.com/albums/pp81/Oqsy/IMG_0791.jpg)
This was found on microfilm smuggled out of the Groom Lake facility.  It needs further analysis, and could very easily be a fake... but it does at least make you wonder if maybe there really are........ [silenced gunshots: pew pew pew]

Title: space invaders!
Post by: Oqsy on Sun, 24 January 2010, 00:03:33

i actually spent almost an hour in adobe imageready trying to make an animated gif of a grainy blurred NMB switch, and couldn't get it to save the damn thing, so all i ended up with was the individual frames.  I go to the trouble to type up the post and attach a frame, and not a single reply.  Either it was so good no one could come up with a response, or I tried to pile on to a joke WAY too late.  

Oh well:

INTRAWEBS 1 / OQSY 0