THE MAGAZINE OF TECHNOLOGY INSIDERS

MACHINIMA’S MOvIE MOGuLS WITHOuT ACTORS, CAMERAS, SETS, OR pROpS, A NEW GENERATION OF GEEkS IS HACkING ITS WAY INTO HOLLYWOOD volume 45 number 7 north american 07.08 update 11 ItalIan Isotopes u.s. critics hope to halt nuclear waste imports. By Sally Adee

13 CrImeware pays

14 oCean power on the rIse

15 mIxIng memorIes to speed solId-state drIves

16 a lunar landIng of sorts 46 18 the bIg pICture A dusting of detritus orbits earth.

opinion 9 speCtral lInes Paper or pixels? A look at books in a networked age.

10 forum external controls take over, the history of commonsense management, and our automotive editor defends his top 10.

20 refleCtIons Getting used to not having privacy. By Robert W. Lucky

departments 4 baCk story

6 ContrIbutors

26 36 21 Careers How to get a mentor. By Carl Selinger Creatures cover story and Creators: Kiva’s founders tools & toys and their 36 machinima’s 22 Digitize your old LPs. robotic herd; By Tekla S. Perry The Pencil, one movie moguls 23 Meet the winner of our clock- of our 10 favorite making contest. By Philip E. Ross tech books; Forget cameras, actors, and elaborate sets: a new generation 24 can a database think? a character from of filmmakers relies only on bandwidth and a video game. the video game By Paul Wallich Halo 3 is now a By David Kushner 25 Amazon’s Kindle is the best of cinematic star. the bunch of e-book readers. 26 three 42 10 great By Sherry Sontag engineers, tech booKs COVER imagE: hundreds of 24 books PHOTO: See if your own favorites Leo Beranek, pioneer of acoustics. maTTHEw robots, one appear on this list of nonfiction maHOn; DigiTal By Roger Zimmerman illusTRaTiOn: warehouse tech tomes, which deal with sanDbOx 56 the data sTuDiO inventions as different as the At Kiva’s robotic warehouse, efforts to electrify Iraq have been THis PagE: ClOCkwisE fROm lEfT: JOsHua machines do all the heavy lifting. pencil and the bomb. stymied by insurgent attacks and DalsimER; TimOTHy aRCHibalD; ROOsTER TEETH By Erico Guizzo By Steven Levy provincial infighting. By Sally Adee www.spectrum.ieee.org juLy 2008 • Ieee sPectruM • NA 1 volume 45 number 7 north american 07.08

www.Ieee.orG/ tHeINstItute available 8 july on the institute online

lEfT: HaRsHa PRaHlaD/ sRi inTERnaTiOnal; RigHT: JasOn REEkiE/ www.sPectruM.Ieee.orG power society isTOCkPHOTO available 1 july on spectrum online gets new name Ieee’s oldest society has a new name. the Ieee Power engineering society bots scale is now the Ieee Power & energy society. the name change reflects the new heights inclusion of emerging technologies. Engineers are making headway in a new challenge for robots: climbing vertical surfaces. Wall-climbing robots could aid search-and-rescue heart hacKers operations, secretly spy for hours, and inspect aircraft and buildings. If you have an implanted heart defibrillator, beware. there’s a risk that The 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation it may be vulnerable to hacking. read marked the debut of a tank-type robot that uses electrostatic adhesion. about recent research, presented at Others are making bots inspired by the dry adhesive on a gecko’s feet. the Ieee symposium on security and In this month’s featured podcast, IEEE Spectrum’s Prachi Patel-Predd Privacy, which shows some of these reports on where wall-climbing robots are going. devices that can be hacked to release sensitive patient information.

oNLINe FeAtures: ALso oNLINe: ieee adds stICky busIness: scientists are • webcasts e‑learning looking for ways to manage the • radio casimir effect, the quantum- • News partner mechanical phenomenon that • Audio Downloads edistaLearning offers more makes nanometer-scale MeMs • Podcasts than 45 e-learning courses on components stick together. • jobs topics like software engineering, • career Accelerator Forum software testing, and project management. read about this slIde show—moon buggIes: • Ieee Xplore® Digital Library and other opportunities from the watch engineers test out lunar rovers • Interviews Ieee education Partners Program. at Moses Lake. • opinions • More!

Ieee speCtrum (IssN 0018-9235) is published monthly by the Institute of electrical and electronics engineers, Inc. All rights reserved. © 2008 by the Institute of electrical and electronics engineers, Inc., 3 Park Avenue, New york, Ny 10016-5997, u.s.A. the editorial content of Ieee spectrum magazine does not represent official positions of the Ieee or its organizational units. canadian Post International Publications Mail (canadian Distribution) sales Agreement No. 40013087. return undeliverable canadian addresses to: circulation Department, Ieee spectrum, Box 1051, Fort erie, oN L2A 6c7. cable address: ItrIPLee. Fax: +1 212 419 7570. INterNet: [email protected]. ANNuAL suBscrIPtIoNs-Ieee Members: $21.40 included in dues. Libraries/institutions: $205. PostMAster: Please send address changes to Ieee spectrum, c/o coding Department, Ieee service center, 445 Hoes Lane, Box 1331, Piscataway, Nj 08855. Periodicals postage paid at New york, Ny, and additional mailing offices.c anadian Gst #125634188. Printed at w224-N3322 Duplainville rd., Pewaukee, wI 53072-4195, u.s.A. Ieee spectrum circulation is audited by BPA worldwide. Ieee spectrum is a member of American Business Media, the Magazine Publishers of America, and the society of National Association Publications. www.spectrum.ieee.org juLy 2008 • Ieee sPectruM • NA 3 back story

editorial

EdITor IN chIEF Susan hassler, [email protected]

It’s good we got to him just ExEcUTIVE EdITor Glenn Zorpette, [email protected] when we did, because Wired’s a bit MANAGING EdITor Elizabeth A. Bretz, [email protected] of a competitor of ours, although SENIor EdITorS harry Goldstein (online), [email protected]; Jean Kumagai, [email protected]; Samuel K. Moore (News), the folks over there would prefer to [email protected]; Tekla S. Perry, [email protected]; Philip E. reverse the syntax. But it certainly ross (resources), [email protected]; would have been hard for Levy david Schneider, [email protected]; William Sweet, [email protected] to resist our invitation to write SENIor ASSocIATE EdITor Steven cherry, [email protected]

on a subject even closer to his ASSocIATE EdITorS Sally Adee, [email protected]; Erico Guizzo, heart than technology: technology [email protected]; Joshua J. romero (online), books. In this issue he reviews his [email protected]; Sandra Upson, [email protected] 10 favorite nonfiction titles and ASSISTANT EdITor Willie d. Jones, [email protected] SENIor coPy EdITor Joseph N. Levine, [email protected] throws in three novels, just for fun. coPy EdITor Michele Kogon, [email protected]

Levy’s written five tech books EdITorIAL rESEArchEr Alan Gardner, [email protected]

himself, as well as one on true ExEcUTIVE ProdUcEr, SPEcTrUM rAdIo Sharon Basco

crime. He began in 1984 with ASSISTANT ProdUcEr, SPEcTrUM rAdIo Francesco Ferorelli, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer [email protected] AdMINISTrATIVE ASSISTANTS ramona Gordon, [email protected]; Revolution, now in an updated Nancy T. hantman, [email protected]

edition (Penguin, 2001). This INTErN Monica heger, [email protected]

was the book that acquainted the coNTrIBUTING EdITorS John Blau, robert N. charette, world with the notion that do-it- Peter Fairley, Alexander hellemans, david Kushner, robert W. Lucky, Paul McFedries, Kieron B. Murphy, yourself software design could be carl Selinger, Seema Singh, John Voelcker a force for good as well as evil. art & production His most recent book, The SENIor ArT dIrEcTor Mark Montgomery Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles He’s Got A ASSISTANT ArT dIrEcTorS Laura h. Azran, Brandon Palacio Commerce, Culture, and Coolness PhoTo EdITor randi Silberman

(Simon & Schuster, 2006), dIrEcTor, PErIodIcALS ProdUcTIoN SErVIcES Peter Tuohy Little List reinforces Levy’s reputation as one EdITorIAL & WEB ProdUcTIoN MANAGEr roy carubia of the savviest, most plugged-in, SENIor ELEcTroNIc LAyoUT SPEcIALIST Bonnie Nani n March, while working for his and most objective connoisseurs WEB ProdUcTIoN coordINATor Jacqueline L. Parker erstwhile employer, Newsweek, as and critics of all things Apple. WEB ProdUcTIoN SPEcIALIST Michael Spector I senior editor for technology, Steven The criticism part has won both editorial advisory Board Levy took home the Apple MacBook the respect and the ire of Steve Susan hassler, Chair; Marc T. Apter, Francine d. Berman, Jan Brown, raffaello d’Andrea, Stephen L. diamond, hiromichi Air to review and left it on a pile of Jobs, who once called Levy’s Fujisawa, Kenneth y. Goldberg, Susan hackwood, Erik heijne, papers. He hypothesizes that his home at 11:00 p.m. and launched charles h. house, david h. Jacobson, christopher J. James, ronald G. Jensen, Mary y. Lanzerotti, ruby B. Lee, Tak Ming wife didn’t notice the thing and into a dressing-down—only to be Mak, david A. Mindell, c. Mohan, Fritz Morgan, Andrew M. therefore threw it out, along with the informed that he was speaking not odlyzko, Leslie d. owens, Barry L. Shoop, Larry L. Smarr, entire pile (a hypothesis his wife dis- to Levy but to his son. “Well, you harry L. “Nick” Tredennick III, William Weihl, Bas¸ak yüksel putes). What an illustration of the sure sound like him,” growled Jobs, editorial correspondence Air’s famously superthin profile— before slamming down the phone. IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave., 17th Floor, New york, Ny 10016-5997 Attn: Editorial dept. Tel: +1 212 419 7555 Fax: +1 212 419 7570 and what a story. Of course, Levy So which book has most Bureau: Palo Alto, calif.; Tekla S. Perry +1 650 328 7570 pounced on it himself. inspired Levy? “My inspiration responsibility for the substance of articles rests upon the authors, not the IEEE or its members. Articles published do Erstwhile? No, no, it’s not wasn’t the best technology books not represent official positions of the IEEE. Letters to the what you’re thinking. Losing that per se but the best nonfiction editor may be excerpted for publication. loaner didn’t lead to a layoff. Levy books, period,” he says. “[Robert] advertising correspondence had been weighing a move for Caro’s books on Robert Moses IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave., 17th Floor, New york, Ny 10016-5997 some time, and when Newsweek and Lyndon Johnson, Tom Wolfe’s Attn: Advertising dept. +1 212 419 7760 The publisher reserves the right to reject any advertising. foolishly offered fat buyouts books. Richard Rhodes’s The to its entire staff, he pounced Making of the Atomic Bomb is simply reprint permission LIBrArIES: Articles may be photocopied for private use on that opportunity too. Now great, but I hadn’t read it at the of patrons. A per-copy fee must be paid to the copyright he’s at the tech mag Wired. time I began writing books.” o clearance center, 29 congress St., Salem, MA 01970. For other copying or republication, contact Business Manager, IEEE Spectrum.

citing articles in ieee spectrum coPyrIGhTS ANd TrAdEMArKS: IEEE Spectrum is a registered IEEE Spectrum publishes two editions. In the international edition, the abbreviation INT appears at the trademark owned by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Donck Damien foot of each page. The North American edition is identified with the letters NA. Both have the same Engineers Inc. careers, EEs’ Tools & Toys, EV Watch, Progress, editorial content, but because of differences in advertising, page numbers may differ. In citations, reflections, Spectral Lines, and Technically Speaking are you should include the issue designation. For example, the first Update page is in IEEE Spectrum, trademarks of the IEEE. Vol. 45, no. 7 (INT), July 2008, p. 7, or in IEEE Spectrum, Vol. 45, no. 7 (NA), July 2008, p. 11.  na • ieee spectrum • July 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org IEEE MEdIa Staff Director; PubliSher, IEEE SpEctrum James a. Vick, [email protected] aSSociate PubliSher, SaleS & aDVertiSing Director Marion Delaney, [email protected] recruitMent SaleS DeVeloPMent Manager TIMOTHY originally a vaudeville house, is the Michael buryk, [email protected] ARCHIBALD, work of architect John Eberson, who buSineSS Manager robert t. ross Marketing & ProMotion Manager blanche Mcgurr, based in San designed numerous movie palaces [email protected] Francisco, created throughout the United States in the liSt/recruitMent Marketing Manager ilia rodriguez, [email protected] the photos for first half of the 20th century. rePrint SaleS +1 212 221 9595, ext. 319 “10 Great Tech Books” [p.42] with DePartMent aDMiniStrator faith h. Jeanty, [email protected] stylist Shannon Amos. The two SCOTT OLDS aDVertiSing SaleS +1 212 419 7760 telePhone aDVertiSing/SaleS rePreSentatiVe have collaborated often, several and his colleagues at John restchack +1 212 419 7578 times for IEEE Spectrum. Sandbox Studio, in aDVertiSing ProDuction Manager felicia Spagnoli Senior aDVertiSing ProDuction coorDinator nicole evans Archibald is the author of the Sterling Heights, aDVertiSing ProDuction +1 732 562 6334 book Sex Machines: Photographs Mich., specialize in ieee Staff executiVe, PublicationS anthony Durniak and Interviews. computer graphics illustrations IEEE Board of dIrEctors for such clients as GM and Ford. PreSiDent & ceo lewis M. terman +1 732 562 3928 fax: +1 732 465 6444 [email protected] SHANNON Departing from automotive PreSiDent-elect John r. Vig AMOS, prop stylist, imagery for this month’s cover treaSurer David g. green set builder, and and the opening image of Secretary barry l. Shoop PaSt PreSiDent leah h. Jamieson prop fabricator, “Machinima’s Movie Moguls” VIcE PrEsIdEnts found the perfect [p. 36] “stretched our brains,” evangelia Micheli-tzanakou, Educational Activities; John setting for the tech books shoot says Olds. The artists made baillieul, Publication Services and Products; Joseph V. lillie, Member & Geographic Activities; george W. arnold, President, [p. 42]: a home built by real estate drawings in pencil, then scanned Standards Association; J. roberto b. de Marca, Technical Activities; russell J. lefevre, President, IEEE-USA developer Joseph Eichler, whose them into the computer alongside dIVIsIon dIrEctors thousands of houses, many in photos of the real people. Using giovanni De Micheli (i); thomas g. habetler (ii); Silicon Valley, epitomize the Photoshop, they added color and curtis a. Siller Jr. (iii); edward Della torre (iV); Deborah M. cooper (V); irving engelson (Vi); California modern style. The retouched the backgrounds, John D. McDonald (Vii); thomas W. Williams (Viii); frederick c. Mintzer (ix); William a. gruver (x) Northern California site giving the final product a Amos picked had “the best of dramatic finish. rEgIon dIrEctors howard e. Michel (1); John c. Dentler (2); William b. ratcliff (3); everything,” she says. robert J. Dawson (4); David J. Pierce (5); loretta J. arellano (6); ferial el-hawary (7); Jean g. remy (8); enrique e. alvarez (9); SHERRY Janina e. Mazierska (10)

DAVID KUSHNER, SONTAG reviewed dIrEctors EMErItus a Spectrum contrib‑ Amazon’s Kindle eric herz, theodore W. hissey uting editor, is the and two other IEEE staff author of Masters of e‑book readers for huMan reSourceS betsy Davis, SPhr +1 732 465 6434, [email protected] Doom (Random this issue [p. 25]. Sontag is PublicationS anthony Durniak House, 2003) and Jonny Magic and coauthor of the best seller Blind +1 732 562 3998, [email protected] chief inforMation officer Sally ericksen the Card Shark Kids (Random Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of +1 732 562 5345, [email protected] House, 2005). While reporting his American Submarine Espionage eDucational actiVitieS Douglas gorham +1 732 562 5483, [email protected] article “Machinima’s Movie (Harper Perennial, 1998). She StanDarDS actiVitieS Judith gorman Moguls” [p. 36], he visited the lives and works in New York City. +1 732 562 3820, [email protected] MeMber & geograPhic actiVitieS cecelia Jankowski offices of Rooster Teeth +1 732 562 5504, [email protected] corPorate Strategy & coMMunicationS Matthew loeb, cae Productions, in Austin, Texas, to ROGER +1 732 562 5320, [email protected] watch the team in action. The ZIMMERMAN buSineSS aDMiniStration richard D. Schwartz director even let Kushner control reviewed the +1 732 562 5311, [email protected] technical actiVitieS Mary Ward-callan one of the onscreen animated memoir of renowned +1 732 562 3850, [email protected] Managing Director, ieee-uSa chris brantley characters; sadly, he got blown up. acoustics expert Leo +1 202 530 8349, [email protected]

Beranek [p. 24]. Zimmerman, an IEEE PuBlIcatIon sErVIcEs & Products Board MATTHEW occasional trombonist, works on John baillieul, Chair; tayfun akgul, george W. arnold, Duncan c. baker, John t. barr iV, george cybenko, gerald l. engel, Marion MAHON shot the automatic speech recognition and o. hagler, lawrence o. hall, Jens hannemann, lajos hanzo, leah h. Jamieson, hirohisa kawamoto, Paul kostek, Mary y. cover and the natural language processing for lanzerotti, Jose M. f. Moura, adrian V. Pais, roger D. Pollard, Saifur rahman, Sorel reisman, Suzanne M. rivoire, Jon g. machinima feature eScription, of Needham, Mass. rokne, W. ross Stone, robert J. trew, leung tsang, Stephen [p. 36] photos in the He’s also an avid amateur brewer: yurkovich, amir i. Zaghloul landmark Paramount Theatre, in the last beer he helped make had a IEEE oPEratIons cEntEr 445 hoes lane, box 1331, Piscataway, nJ 08854-1331 u.S.a. Austin, Texas. The 1915 building, luscious hoppy bitterness. tel: +1 732 981 0060 fax: +1 732 981 1721 CLOCKWISE FROMLEFT: MARKTOP RICHARDS, SANDBOX STUDIO, CHE SHANNONGRAHAM, DEBRAMAHON, AMOS MATTHEW LAVINE, BETH KELLY,  na • IEEE sPEctruM • July 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org “man is the only 150-pound nonlinear servomechanism that can be wholly reproduced by unskilled labor” —Ashley Montagu spectral lines

when they’re not cataloging them! In this summer reading issue Books in A we’ve given you a chance to peruse someone’s library in yet Networked Age another way—not by visiting him at home but by reading about it s a fledgling editor, I in a magazine. In “10 Great Tech was very lucky to work Books,” noted technology writer Awith the celebrated author Steven Levy gives us 10 of his per- and anthropologist Ashley sonal nonfiction (and three fic- Montagu. A prolific writer—he tion) favorites and tells us why wrote more than 60 books and they made his list. I agree with countless essays and reviews—he many of his choices, but I can was also a prodigious collector of think of others I might have books. I loved books too, and as included. What about Edward one of his many editors I always Tenner’s Why Things Bite Back: found it great fun to visit him at Technology and the Revenge of home in Princeton, N.J., to work Unintended Consequences? Or Katie on a piece. The house was a lovely Hafner’s Where Wizards Stay Up garden-surrounded rabbit war- Late: The Origins of the Internet? ren with books simply every- Or Michael Riordan and Lillian not to mention the very exis- where, the stairs, the cupboards, Hoddesson’s Crystal Fire: Birth of tence—of book publishing. In the tabletops. I’d roam around the Information Age? Or Douglas the networked book age, what looking at his old books, new Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the will publishers do when authors books, the books he was review- Galaxy? Or anything by Philip K. and readers can reach each ing, the books he was using for Dick? And perhaps even Edward other more or less directly? research. And whenever I came Tufte’s The Visual Display of But publishers need to rec- across one that I had in my own Quantitative Information. I’m sure ognize that while digitaliza- much more modest library I felt you’ll have your own quibbles and tion and the Web bring chal- a little secret thrill—great minds shoo-ins, and I hope you’ll visit lenges, they are also creating new thinking alike! our Web site to share them with book life-forms, enriched with Now it’s possible to poke us [see http://www.spectrum. the immense linked resources through other people’s libraries ieee.org/jul08/booklists]. of the Internet. And they are and compare them with your own The migration of books from getting more people to read by visiting them online. These printed to digital formats has and think and talk about read- so-called virtual bookshelves look brought pleasure and pain to the ing. The virtual bookshelf com- like library stacks and allow you publishing community. Digital munities are proof of that. to post books with reviews and book sales are up, and devices As science-fiction writer comments for a self-selected cir- like the Kindle [see our review Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in cle of friends to see and discuss. in this issue, “Re-Kindling a her trenchant essay “Staying Facebook hosts something called Love of Books”] make it possi- Awake: Notes on the Alleged the Visual Bookshelf. When I vis- ble for people to carry several Decline of Reading,” published ited in early June, it was claiming books—or a hundred—with- in this past February’s Harper’s that 2 128 143 people were using out a backpack. Amazon’s Jeff Magazine, books are social vec- the app to put 45 916 425 books Bezos fantasizes about creat- tors. They bind our ideas and into their Facebook profiles. There ing the modern equivalent of our cultures together. Whether are plenty of other book-sharing the Library of Alexandria, with these books are composed of sites—if you Google around you’ll any existing book available in a glue and paper or pixels and find Shelfari and BookRabbit and 60-second download. But oth- electrons, their importance to

Sony LibraryThing, among many others. ers worry about the impact of our human community will So somebody is reading books— such an idea on the economics— remain intact. —Susan Hassler

www.spectrum.ieee.org July 2008 • IEEE SpEctrum • NA  forum

outside the auto motive HOW GREEN cially available technol- industries and that its ARE THESE ogy. It is not intended application to semi- MACHINES? to be an uncritical conductor manufactur- op 10 Tech Cars” by look at technologies ing is novel. The article TJohn Voelcker [April] unlikely to penetrate provides an interesting is not acceptable. The the mainstream market account of its e ective- article was supposed to within three to fi ve years. ness in the case described. value “green” machines’ For this article, we defi ne TPS was fi rst being high-tech. Good automotive technology described for Western idea. So how can you broadly and include readers by Womack, continue to value developments to con- Jones, and Roos in their machines like the ventional, combustion- book, The Machine That Corvette, big sedans, engined cars because OVERRIDES Changed the World, pub- and some SUVs? These that’s what almost all COME STANDARD lished in 1990 (the article cars are ethically our readers are buying. LETTERS do not n “The Hunt for the claimed by the authors unacceptable when To address some represent opinions Kill Switch” [May], as the fi rst description you consider that they of Rolland’s specifi c of the IEEE. Short, I concise letters are Sally Adee describes appeared nine years consume immense points: we covered the preferred. They the threat of outside later). I described it, and amounts of fuel and are Tesla Roadster in last may be edited for forces taking control explained how its prin- driven at speeds that far year’s Top 10 and the space and clarity. of deployed chips away ciples could be applied exceed the limits of most Venturi Fetish back in Additional letters from military users via to any engineering highways. Even valuing 2005. As for the ZAP are available online in “And More Forum” remote “kill switches.” manufacturing opera- biofuel is very contro- company, it seems at http://www. But that’s exactly the tion, in my books The versial—it impoverishes unlikely to ever produce spectrum.ieee.org. purpose of the digital- Practice of Engineering developing countries, and sell vehicles. Write to Forum, rights management sys- Management in 1994 and and the true energy cost Rolland’s assertion that IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave., 17th tems designed to block The New Management of biofuel is not worth it. our list is U.S.- centric Floor, New York, NY copyrighted content of Engineering in 2005. Where are the true elec- is simply incorrect. Of 10016-5997, U.S.A.; from playing on unau- TPS is really com- tric cars? Why not show the eight production fax, +1 212 419 7570; thorized hardware: monsense management, the serious green cars: cars on the list, three e-mail, n.hantman publishers want to take following the principles ZAP-X, MVS Venturi cannot be purchased in @ieee.org. control of deployed taught by Peter Drucker Fetish, Tesla, SVE North America (they chips away from media and W.E. Deming in the Cleanova, or Peugeot’s are the Tata Nano, users. When we have 1950s but applied e ec- hybrid car with diesel? Mazda2/Demio, and an entire industry tively and uniquely by Finally, this article VW Polo BlueMotion), working hard to build Japanese industry long values only cars you four more are globally external overrides before their competitors can fi nd in North available (Jaguar XF, into electronics, it’s no woke up to the realities. America. Here in the Nissan GT-R, BMW X6, wonder we end up with Since the 1980s these United Kingdom, I can Chevrolet Corvette ZR1), external overrides built principles have been see the superiority of and only one (Lincoln into electronics. widely applied in other French and Italian cars. MKS) is specifi c to Matthew Skala countries and industries. Luc Rolland North America. We IEEE Member However, the article Preston, England will probably include Waterloo, Ont., Canada should stimulate further Peugeot’s diesel uptake, particularly by The author responds: hybrid in our Top 10 IT’S JUST electronics companies. This annual feature if it becomes com- appeals to our readers mercially available. COMMON SENSE Patrick O’Connor he article by IEEE Member as users of inter- Finally, we cover TChristensen, King, Stevenage, England esting and commer- green machines regularly. Verlinden, and Yang, Our May issue, for exam- “The New Economics MVS Venturi ple, featured a Toyota Fetish of Semiconductor Prius that had been con- Manufacturing” [May], verted into a plug-in implies that the Toyota hybrid electric vehicle Production System (TPS) with a 48- kilometer

has not been applied electric range. ❏ VENTURI BOTTOM: AUTOMOBILES JAMESTOP: ARCHER/ANATOMYBLUE;

10 NA • IEEE SPECTRUM • JULY 2008 WWW.SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG more online at http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

waste and any other foreign- keep out: generated LLRW. “­No other This dump in U.S. Critics Hope to Halt Clive, Utah, is the country in the world is accepting focal point of nuclear waste from other an international Nuclear-Waste Imports countries,” Gordon says. “­The scheme to import nuclear Utah firm wants Italian isotopes United States is putting itself in a position to become the world’s waste into the United States. nuclear dumping ground.” photo: Douglas C. pizaC/ n American company’s small case could set a precedent Most nuclear countries ap photo application to import with far-reaching consequences. keep their LLRW on-site at A18 150 metric tons of low- Last September, Energy- reactors or, like Finland, in level radioactive waste (LLRW) Solutions, a nuclear waste underground storage. In the from Italy into the United treatment and disposal company United States, LLRW goes to States has set off a firestorm of based in Salt Lake City, filed an three regional dumps. Gordon controversy. In just four months, application with the Nuclear worries that a precedent for the proposal has elicited over 2000 Regulatory Commission (NRC) to accepting foreign-generated comments on the U.S. Nuclear import the low-level radioactive nuclear waste could compromise Regulatory Commission’s Web waste. LLRW is a definition by U.S. storage capacity. site, a federal lawsuit, and a exclusion: it is anything that is EnergySolutions spokesman bill in the U.S. Congress that not spent fuel and may include Mark Walker disagrees. The would ban the importation of tools, radioactive lumber, steel, company’s 2.6-square-kilometer all “­foreign-generated” low-level clothing, and concrete. Angered waste disposal facility at Clive, nuclear waste. Because the case by the plan, Representative Bart Utah, he says, “­has enough touches on issues related to the Gordon (D.–Tenn.), chair of the capacity to dispose of [the LLRW Bush administration’s plans for House Science and Technology from] all 104 [commercial] international radioactive materials Committee, introduced a bill in U.S. nuclear reactors and still trade, the outcome of this relatively March that would ban the Italian have over 50 million cubic feet www.SpeCTrUm.Ieee.org July 2008 • IEEE SpEctrum • NA 11 “we believe it’s the world’s smallest ramen bowl, with the smallest portion of noodles inside, although they are not edible”—University of Tokyo’s masayuki Nakao telling the Associated press about this bowl, a little over 1 micrometer in diameter, that his lab made and filled with carbon nanotubes

[about 1.4 million cubic meters] of based on the level of radioactivity. Class about 12 000 metric tons, will then capacity to spare.” Walker adds that A is the lowest, in some cases no more be condensed into about 1450 metric because the EnergySolutions facility radioactive than a smoke detector. tons and sent to EnergySolutions’ is a private nuclear waste disposal High-level waste will go to France or LLRW dump in Clive, Utah. site, the company’s plans would not the UK, he says. “­Only Class A waste “­You cannot take 20 000 tons affect federally mandated LLRW sites. will be shipped to the United States.” of this waste, incinerate it, reduce But analysts question some But an analysis of the NRC it by volume, and end up with of the fundamental points of documents contradicts Walker’s claim, Class A waste,” says Makhijani. Its EnergySolution’s application. And argues Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear- radioactivity would have to increase. Utah residents have reason not to trust fusion engineer with the Institute for At press time, Representative the company, says Vanessa Pierce, Energy and Environmental Research, Gordon was gathering cosponsors executive director of HEAL, a Utah a think tank based in Takoma for the bill banning imports. “­If nonprofit opposed to the company’s Park, Md. Makhijani examined the there is not a legislative change, it plan. In 2006, the company was NRC license application, which lists means these license applications known as Envirocare. The name the amounts and types of radioactive have to be fought case by case,” says a change resulted from the company’s elements intended for the Italy congressional aide in Gordon’s office. acquisition of two other firms and a shipments, including transuranics But Ivan Oelrich, a nuclear desire by the new CEO to distance like plutonium. “­If they import all physicist with the Federation of EnergySolutions from an extortion the transuranics they say they’re American Scientists, thinks that and bribery scandal associated with going to, then they are importing Gordon’s bill, if passed this year, the previous owner, which involved Class C waste,” Makhijani says. could risk being vetoed by President more than US $600 000 in real estate, According to EnergySolutions’ NRC Bush. “­It’s because of the precedent Swiss bank account transfers, and application, the plan for the Italian it would set to ban importing nuclear gold coins. “­Gold coins!” Pierce waste is to first classify the waste in waste,” Oelrich says. The president’s exclaims. “­It’s like a bad movie.” Italy and then ship the LLRW to the plan for resumption of spent fuel Despite the name change, much of the United States for processing at its Bear reprocessing and recycling in the original leadership remains intact. Creek facility, in Oak Ridge, Tenn., United States requires a global “­We are not excited about being which is licensed to accept Class B and transfer of plutonium and other home to the world’s largest for-profit Class C wastes. After processing and transuranics under a program nuclear waste dump,” Pierce adds. separation, 6350 metric tons are to be called the Global Nuclear Energy The waste has to go somewhere, recycled for use as specialty building Partnership (GNEP). Any law that counters Walker. “­We are taking only materials and shipped to Japan. Walker would isolate the United States the lowest level of radioactive waste,” he says the company’s waste treatment from international nuclear waste says. U.S. regulations separate LLRW processes are capable of a 200-to-1 trade would signal a lack of political into subclasses—named A, B, and C— volume reduction. The remaining waste, support for the GNEP. —Sally Adee

transatlantic traffic: A U.S. firm’s Clive, Utah plans to import Italian Portland, CLIVE DISPOSAL Ore. FACILITY nuclear waste and dump 1450 metric tons it in Utah okyo/ap photo okyo/ap To Class A material bothers some t Japan lawmakers. 6350 metricUNITED tons: STATES shield blocks Oak Ridge, Tenn. (building+1 mate6rial.3%) BEAR CREEK FACILITY Charleston, Waste condensed by incineration S.C. New Orleans, La. hi laboratory/university of hi laboratory/university From Italy: C 18 150 metric tons of Class A radioactive material nakao hamagu nakao

12 NA • IEEE SpEctrum • July 2008 www.SpeCTrUm.Ieee.org crimeware pays Adware, phishing, and spam are a strange—and big—business

s recently as five Understanding New Attacks years ago, online and Defenses (Addison- Acrime—malware, Wesley Professional) with his Trojan horses, phishing—was Symantec colleague Sourabh still a kid’s game, dominated Satish. Although Microsoft by grandstanding cliques of promptly patched the security hackers. But today, according hole that iFrameCash to new industry studies, took advantage of, many “­crimeware” has become an computers around the world emerging worldwide business. remained unpatched and Often based in former Soviet vulnerable for months. A bloc countries like Russia similar attack on MySpace and Romania, where Internet users in 2006, exploiting access is high but policing the same hole, resulted in low, burgeoning syndicates more than a million infected regularly launch attacks on computers. Cole estimates The aggregate revenue Phishing and adware have users around the world. The that each infected computer generated by computerized straightforward business first comprehensive analysis could net 20 to 30 U.S. cents fraud and crime, says Ross models, but the crimeware of crimeware business for the Russian perpetrators. Anderson, professor of industry has its quirks. For models finds a multitude The fly-by-night nature security engineering at the instance, the going rate of ways to make money. Of of the crimeware business University of Cambridge, in for access to a good World them, phishing is the fastest- makes tracking overall England, is “­surely in the of Warcraft avatar is $10 growing sector, but adware is industry revenues difficult, billions of dollars” from the or more on Internet black the steady moneymaker. says Cole, although the costs of United States alone. And markets, says Cole. On the Adware is code secretly computer crime are reported the fastest growing sector, other hand, he adds, “­You installed by a Web site that annually by the U.S. Federal he adds, is phishing—the can buy a [real person’s] generates pay-per-click Bureau of Investigation spam that tries to coax naive stolen identity for anywhere advertising on a user’s and the Computer Security users into giving up access from $1 to $2. That includes computer. As frustrated users Institute, a private to their bank accounts. name, social security number, try to click their way out of membership organization The biggest difficulty mother’s maiden name, a sudden flurry of pop-up of IT security experts. with phishing, he says, is address—all the things you ads, each ad’s owner must According to the 2007 CSI that banks—the primary need to actually open up send money to the adware Computer Crime and Security targets of phishing e-mails— a [credit card] account.” supplier. (Generally, the Survey, computer crime is are extremely secretive. And Cole says this pricing advertiser is unaware that on the rise—costing each CSI that has left the industry disparity reflects the ease malicious adware is involved.) member bank, company, or exposed to phishing attacks and immediacy with which One Russian Web site, organization an average of that could be thwarted with real-world cash can be iFrameCash.biz, exploited US $345 000, up 105 percent better cooperation between wrung from the respective a Microsoft Windows from 2006. But those costs banks’ IT departments. In stolen goods. Setting up security hole in late 2005, are far from those incurred 2006, for instance, UK banks phony credit cards takes generating thousands or during the boom years of 2001 lost £35 million (currently effort and exposes the thief perhaps millions of dollars in and 2002, when CSI member about $68 million) to to prosecution. On the adware revenue, notes David organizations (whose firewalls phishers, but 93 percent of other hand, rogue World of Cole, director of consumer and security measures that was from a single attack Warcraft trading Web sites products at Symantec, in were still comparatively on Barclays. “­From the point offer quick cash. And no one Cupertino, Calif. Cole unsophisticated) reported of view of every other bank is likely to complain “­to the a nna Demian nna coauthored a chapter on an average annual in 2006, that wasn’t their FBI that they lost their magic crimeware business models loss of $3.1 million and problem,” Anderson says. sword to someone in China,” in the new book Crimeware: $2.1 million, respectively. “­That was Barclays’ problem.” he says. —Mark Anderson

www.SpeCTrUm.Ieee.org July 2008 • IEEE SpEctrum • NA 13 Ocean Power Catches a Wave europe and New Zealand to install commercial generators; U.S. lags

he first commercial ocean energy project is scheduled to launch this sea monster: A portuguese utility plans to install wave-power generators like these. Tsummer off the coast of Portugal. Three snakelike wave-power generators built by Edinburgh’s Pelamis Wave off Scotland’s northeastern coast. ocean-power projects going in New Power will deliver 2.25 megawatts The UK created EMEC with an eye Zealand was made easier thanks to an through an undersea cable to the toward making renewables 20 percent of initiative introduced in October 2007, Portuguese coastal town of Aguçadoura. its energy mix by 2020. The government- says Anthony J. Hopkins, codirector Within a year, another 28 generators financed Carbon Trust estimates of Crest Energy. It places a 10-year should come online there, boosting that Britain could someday meet as moratorium on the construction of new the capacity to 22.5 MW. That may much as one-fifth of its electricity fossil fuel power plants by state-owned be a trickle of power, but the project demand using ocean energy alone. For utilities and creates an emissions- represents a new push into wave and its part, the Scottish government is trading scheme. “­This levels the tidal power as governments eye the awarding the annual US $20 million playing field quite a bit,” says Hopkins. oceans as a way to meet their renewable Saltire Prize to the creator of the most Despite growing momentum for energy targets. innovative marine renewable-energy ocean power elsewhere, the tide hasn’t Engineers have come up with a technology deployed there. “­Scotland turned in the United States, where variety of schemes to harness the power has a huge renewable-energy potential— environmental regulatory tangles of waves, the flow of currents, and enough to meet its demand for power and a preference for wind and solar the motion of the tides. The Pelamis almost 10 times over,” says its energy energy have left most ocean-energy generators, part of a class of wave-energy minister, Jim Mather. Scotland is schemes at the research stage. Though converters called linear absorbers, each estimated to be home to 25 percent of ocean energy could offset as much comprise three long canisters that look Europe’s tidal power potential and as 10 percent of national electricity like giant oxygen tanks. Hinged joints 10 percent of its wave-power potential. demand, “­it will be around 2020 link the canisters; when the waves On the other side of the globe, New before any [U.S.-based] commercial change the segments’ positions relative Zealand already gets 60 percent of projects come online,” predicts to one another, the joints push hydraulic its electric power from renewables Roger Bedard, the lead ocean-energy rams, which pump high-pressure oil but wants to raise that figure to an researcher at the Electric Power through turbines inside the canisters. amazing 90 percent by 2025. Among Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif. Though Portugal may be the site of the ocean-power projects under The Energy Department has requested the first commercial installation, the consideration is an array of 200 tidal only $3 million for ocean energy for UK—Scotland in particular—leads in turbines that would be anchored to the 2009 fiscal year, compared with the research and development of ocean the seafloor across the mouth of the $156 million for solar energy. And, says energy and is expected to end up with 900-square-kilometer Kaipara Harbor Bedard, unlike the UK, where a single

the most installed capacity in the coming near Auckland. Crest Energy, the agency has jurisdiction over all ocean- er W o

years, say experts. Pelamis’s generator project’s Auckland-based backer, energy projects, the United States has p was first tested at the European estimates that the turbines would as many as 20 agencies from which Marine Energy Center (EMEC), which yield 200 MW, or 3 percent of the developers have to gain approval— elamis Wave elamis Wave p is located amid the Orkney Islands country’s energy demand. Getting even for a pilot project. —Willie D. Jones

14 NA • IEEE SpEctrum • July 2008 www.SpeCTrUm.Ieee.org is switched off; unlike flash, it can overwrite existing data. mixing memory The mixed-memory prototype improves performance by more to speed than 20 percent compared with an all-flash SSD in a standard solid-state Drives suite of tests that included start- Korean researchers find that a little ferroelectric ing up Windows XP and loading rAm goes a long way applications. The FRAM also speeds the drive’s own boot-up news time by two orders of magnitude, he pricey MacBook Air you must be copied to a fresh mem- to less than 7 milliseconds. brief covet, with its small, light- ory block so that the first block Flash memory stores its Tweight, shock-resistant solid- can be erased. The new data can bits within transistors that are NaNo- state drive (SSD), may have a then be merged with the original connected to each other seri- Flowers secret. Despite their advantages, and written back to the first block. ally. So though NAND flash is These ­sunflowers, ­ which took­ first­ ­ solid-state drives suffer not just But as engineers at Seoul compact, it cannot easily over- place in­ the­ 2008­ ­ from enormous price tags but National University in South write itself. An FRAM cell Materials Research­ ­ also from slow performance dur- Korea report in a recent issue of takes up more space because it Society’s Science­ ­ ing certain key operations. Now IEEE Computer Architecture Letters, stores its bits as an electric field as Art­ ­competition, ­ are ­actually ­bundles ­ Korean engineers report that there’s a better way. They devel- within ferromagnetic capaci- of ­silicon oxide­ ­ through a clever mix of two types oped a prototype solid-state drive, tors, but its arrangement allows nanowires.­ The­ ­ of memory, they can give solid- dubbed Chameleon, that employs for random overwriting. flowers’­ centers­ are­ ­ state drives a boost without also a small amount of ferroelectric Much of the performance gain tightly packed­ ­clusters, ­ jacking up their price. RAM (FRAM), a comparatively comes from the way the FRAM while the­ ­petals ­ are looser­ ­clusters. ­ Unlike a traditional hard-disk expensive niche nonvolatile mem- handles maps and other infor- Researchers from­ the­ ­ drive, which can write new data ory, to more efficiently deal with mation that keeps track of the Chinese University­ ­ directly over recorded data, the such small data changes. “­Our data. Solid-state drives need of Hong­ Kong­ added­ ­ NAND flash memory that makes motivation was to combine the these maps to make themselves color to­ the­ image­ ­ with graphic­ software.­ up solid-state drives requires free benefits of NAND and FRAM so appear to a computer to be a real image: s.k. hark/materials memory space in which to write. as to create a high-performance hard-disk drive. The maps are researCh soCiety That’s usually not a problem when SSD,” says Sang Lyul Min, a pro- frequently subject to small ran- you have to write large chunks of fessor in the department of com- dom updates, something FRAM sequential data, such as a video puter science and engineering at is good at but flash is not. clip. But it is a problem when Seoul National University who Min and his colleagues are you have to make frequent small jointly led the drive’s develop- now working with SSD maker additions and changes to exist- ment with professor Yookun Cho. Mtron Storage Technology, located ing data. If, for instance, you need Like flash memory, FRAM near Seoul, to bring a prod- to update a file, the original data retains its data after the power uct to market. —John Boyd

soliD-state Bit stored Drives work Bit stored as as trapped faster when they electric field charge contain a mix of flash memory [left] and ferroelectric Ferroelectric rAm [right].

Control gate Gate Floating gate

n p n n p n e milyCooper

www.SpeCTrUm.Ieee.org July 2008 • IEEE SpEctrum • NA 15 NASA Touches Down In Moses Lake Field test vets new moon-worthy technology

ASA may not return to the moon N for another 10 years, but that’s not stopping the U.S. space agency from conducting lunar expeditions. In June, research teams move over, Ben Hur: Chariot, a lunar truck prototype designed at the Johnson Space Center, has six double from seven NASA centers wheels that can be steered independently in any direction and a tanklike turret that rotates 360 degrees. gathered at Moses Lake, in central Washington because the loose sand and University, in Pittsburgh, the an unmanned lunar landing state, to test prototypes for treeless horizon roughly robot totes a 1-meter-long drill as soon as next year and a new moon-worthy robots, simulate the lunar surface. for taking geological samples. manned mission by 2017. vehicles, and spacesuits. Among the vehicles fielded During the field test, the India is also contemplating During the two-week-long was a gold-toned, six-wheeled teams replicated remotely a manned mission in 2020. field test, the teams and lunar truck called Chariot. controlling the robots from The Google Lunar X Prize, their machines replicated Intended to carry up to four Earth by sending com- meanwhile, is offering logistical and scientific suited astronauts, Chariot has mands from a cockpit at US $30 million to whomever operations that might be an active suspension that lets the Johnson Space Center. can land a robot on the carried out on the moon. any part of the truck be lifted Talk of a U.S. return moon, drive 500 meters, and It was the first time that and lowered independently. to the moon raises the beam data and images back all the centers were involved “­If one wheel fails, we can inevitable criticism: been to Earth; so far, 14 teams in such a test, which gave the just pick it up and continue there, done that. But this time have registered to compete. teams a chance to see how the mission,” says Lucien will be different, NASA’s But the moon isn’t an end well the equipment they’d Junkin, the vehicle’s chief Bluethmann says. Unlike the in itself, at least for NASA. designed played with others. engineer. Chariot was Apollo era’s quick trips, the The agency’s current plan The field test also designed and built in just manned and robotic missions calls for a manned Mars offered a“­ much broader 12 months. Under such a NASA envisions will extend mission by 2031. “­We’re area to stretch your legs,” compressed schedule, he says, over months or even years. going to practice on the moon, says Bill Bluethmann, a the team became experts at That will mean constructing develop the technology, robotics engineer at NASA’s “­5-minute design reviews.” a lunar infrastructure to learn firm lessons about Johnson Space Center, in Also on hand was support personnel and how humans and machines Houston, who served as the a four-wheeled lunar equipment, as well as a operate on a remote surface, expedition’s leader. Moses prospecting robot called reliable, reusable means for and then apply them to Lake boasts 1200 hectares Scarab, which can operate shuttling cargo and crew. Mars,” says Bluethmann. of sand dunes, popular in daylight as well as at Of course, NASA may “­The nice thing about the with the off-road crowd. night. Built by the Robotics not have the place all to moon is that it’s compara-

NASA liked the spot, too, Institute at Carnegie Mellon itself by then. China plans tively close.” —Jean Kumagai nasa

16 NA • IEEE SpEctrum • July 2008 www.SpeCTrUm.Ieee.org 18 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • july 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org the big picture

SNOW GLOBE Instead of floating inside an orb, these flakes, some of the solar system’s newest ornaments, dance around it. The dusting comprises active satellites and tens of thousands of space scraps—including wrenches left behind after extraterrestrial home-repair projects, bits of long-abandoned satellites, and actual trash bags stuffed with the detritus of manned space flight. The number of pieces of junk in this orbiting garbage dump, which circles Earth at speeds up to 7800 meters per second, is multiplying; when the particles collide, they break into smaller pieces that some believe could eventually make it too risky to put satellites into orbit or even to explore outer space. images: european space agency reflections By roBert w. lucky Zero Privacy

lmost a decade ago a factor of about 64, and the Scott McNealy, chair‑ algorithms for data mining Aman and cofounder of and social‑network analysis Sun Microsystems, famously have become much better. told reporters, “you have zero Information leakage privacy anyway. Get over it.” from one domain to another Maybe McNealy wishes exacerbates the problem. he hadn’t said that, or at Every time some online least that people like me merchant tells me that “other wouldn’t keep bringing it people who bought what you up. When you’re famous, bought also bought such and reporters tend to write down such,” I’m reminded that the random things you say, and merchant is making infer‑ sometimes they don’t come ences about me based on my out quite right. Of course, apparent membership in a McNealy had a point, and if particular group of people. there was little privacy at the This is, of course, a sim‑ end of 1998, there is even less ple example, but there is of it today. Technology has great power in the analysis only one direction—toward of networks of apparent more power and capability— or induced connections. and it goes that way no On top of all this new with a vast, indifferent put all their “life bits” on matter whose interests are technology are the social middle ground. Almost all their Web sites. I sometimes injured. It is up to society trends based on it, as my engineering friends wonder who watches all this to adapt to the inevitable illustrated by the meteoric appear to be in that middle stuff, but incredibly, there changes that are wrought. rise of Facebook, MySpace, ground, saying that they seems to be quite a number The problem is usually that and YouTube. Although would gladly give all their of voyeurs who would society and technology there are many clear ways in private information to the rather watch someone else’s run on different clocks. which these technologies and government in return for life than live their own. In the past decade, camera social trends have weakened saving 10 minutes in airport At the other extreme phones have proliferated, privacy, it would seem that security lines. They seem stands a group of passionate GPS has become ubiquitous, there are no ways in which to reason that since their civil libertarians who view sensor networks have they have strengthened it. privacy isn’t worth anything, the rise of Big Brother become a popular research Furthermore, techno‑ these 10 minutes of their life capabilities as a dire threat topic, the skies have filled logical attempts specifically will be restored to them at to humanity. They maintain with drones that have designed to protect privacy no cost every time they fly. that there should be laws all‑seeing eyes, and RFID have been unsuccessful. At one extreme there prohibiting the government tags have been attached While encryption is a group of pioneers, or from collecting or processing to our cars and other techniques have been a exhibitionists (take your social information. In their big‑ticket products. Now celebrated theoretical choice), who flout their defense, it should be said researchers are developing achievement, they have state of virtual zero privacy, that historical examples microbots with embedded not proved to be a social putting their entire life of government abuses cameras and sensors. panacea. Digital‑rights‑ on the Net for all to see. are not encouraging. Not only can electronic management technology is a A small group of self‑styled So there is quite a systems collect far more model that could be applied “cyborgs” view the world dilemma. Is the privacy information than they could in the privacy domain, but continuously through genie out of the bottle? 10 years ago, but they can so far it has not achieved head‑mounted, networked What should we do about put it all together in new wide market acceptance. cameras. A larger group of it? Alas, no one seems ways. Memory has gotten The argument about people install webcams that to have the answer. much cheaper, processing privacy seems to have broadcast their everyday life Maybe McNealy was on

capability has increased by two polarized extremes at home, while still others to something after all. o brian stauffer

20 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • July 2008 www.sPectrum.ieee.org careers

mentor gets the chance to pass on wisdom. Therefore, never regard your mentor as merely someone to network with. Forcing the person into a not-so-hidden agenda can disrupt the building of a trusting relationship. Mentors should be easy to mini- find, and you probably already profile know a handful of people who By Susan Karlin may fill the bill. Write down their names and see which one(s) you Jackie feel comfortable getting closer to. Martling: Determine whether your Joke Man Jackie Martling has organization or professional society made a career out has a formal mentoring program. of telling jokes, most I’ve been a mentor for 10 years of them off-color, in a transportation society and notably on “The Howard Stern Show” am matched with “apprentices” and now on “Jackie’s who have between 5 and 10 years’ Joke Hunt,” on Sirius experience. A mentor within Satellite Radio 101. your organization gives the added But he’s a closet geek, benefit of understanding your with a mechanical engineering degree Your Mentor Joe (who helped me buy my corporate culture and can advise from Michigan State and You first car and my first house). you on which career moves would University, and he’s Mentors listen to you and be valuable. He or she may also learned the hard Getting the most from give you advice you couldn’t get understand the people with whom way that engineers make the toughest career counselors elsewhere. They talk with you, you may be having some difficulty. audience. His worst review your résumé and work sit- With a mentor providing show ever was at uation, help you do your “SWOT”— support, you won’t be alone when a technical college ou face an important identifying your internal strengths, you’re facing a difficult situation or in Philadelphia in decision in your career weaknesses, opportunities, and frozen with indecision at an impor- 1981, where he’d wowed the crowd Yand don’t know what to threats—and help you think tant career opportunity. You’ll get the year before. This do. You’re in a difficult work through career options and objective feedback from a more time, though, people situation and are under a lot of goals and develop action plans. experienced professional who complained that pressure. Your confidence is low, Don’t be shy: start by has your best interests at heart he told the same jokes both years. and encouragement from others contacting a person you feel good and who may be able to suggest “Of course I did,” he just doesn’t cheer you up. Your about. Most likely the person approaches you hadn’t considered. remembers. “I still world seems to be coming to an knows who you are, but on some And you’re making another tell a lot of the same end. You need a mentor. occasions it may be a stranger, professional friend. Many of my jokes every night. But A mentor is someone who in which case you’d have to dozen former apprentices have no one remembers them. Except those shows you the ropes. He or she explain how you came to call. kept up our relationship, albeit at a engineers that night is usually a bit older than you But don’t ask, “Do you want to less intense level, which has been at the tech college.” and in a more senior position, be my friend?” This is not about very personally satisfying as I’ve For a sampling of his perhaps in your organization making friends. Instead, ask watched their careers develop. humor, go to http:// www.jokeland.com. or in your professional society directly if the person’s willing You have to make the first photo: Janine Martel Dia

M network. A mentor can even be to give you career advice from move, and that can be the biggest on

D a close friend or relative. I’ve time to time, even to meet with hurdle. Go out and find yourself Sky/Getty benefited in my career from a you regularly, say, for lunch. a mentor in the next few weeks. half-dozen mentors, including Remember that this is a long- Then make the most of this iM a Bud (at work), Kim (an alum, term relationship and a two-way relationship to help you advance G e S still a mentor), and my Uncle street: you get advice, and your your career. —Carl Selinger

www.spectrum.ieee.orG July 2008 • IEEE SpEctrum • NA 21 tools&toys

find the right cable, plug the USB cord into my Apple PowerBook G4, and get the included Audacity software loaded and set up. The instructions were clear, simple, and left little out; hats off to Audio- Technica for the best user manual I’ve read in ages. Within the hour I was back to reading e-mail, this time with Blondie blasting through my computer speakers. Unlike digital copying, vinyl ripping happens only in real time—plus another 45 seconds per track for me to chop up the file into tracks and save them in MP3 format. Fortunately, most of this happens in the background, so you can listen while you rip. I’d used Audacity before—to handle voice files—so I knew a few shortcuts, like zooming way out on the sound wave image that represents ment) to a single miniplug—and some the data. You want a bird’s-eye view Let ’Er Rip software. But going this route would that lets you see the breaks between Audio-technica’s usB have meant crawling behind the tracks without a lot of scrolling. turntable spins ’70s vinyl audio equipment in the family room, All the track titles ended up with albums into mp3 gold— unplugging various cables, and sitting the same name, reflecting either a and i don’t even have to there the entire time with one hand problem with Audacity or with the on the speed switch of my old, failing way I used the software. Renaming leave my desk turntable, which doesn’t always hold the tracks is easy. On the plus side, its position by itself. Way too much iTunes filled in most of the cover oodbye to Paris, goodbye to trouble. I was willing to tackle my art automatically. Sound quality the past, we live in shadows…” pile of vinyl albums only if conversion was fine; there was an occasional G Oh, excuse me. I’m listening to was easy and mostly automatic. pop that reminded me that this my favorite vinyl album—Southside The Audio-Technica system lists was a vinyl track, but even through Johnny’s The Jukes—for the first time for more than $200 but is available headphones it was more nostalgic in decades, using the Audio-Technica at retail for about $100. It includes than annoying. (I could have used USB stereo turntable, through my cables for connecting to powered Audacity to clean up the noise.) laptop speakers. Now Southside and speakers, traditional stereo systems, Does Audio-Technica’s USB Blondie and Dan Fogelberg are going computer audio, and USB inputs. turntable make converting old LPs into my iPod. And then maybe I can There was something thrilling about so easy that I’ll actually do it? Yes, it finally say good-bye to the vinyl of my unpacking the USB turntable; it really does, if only for financial reasons. past—and pick up a little closet space. was a trip down memory lane. Slip On average, an album costs about I could have done this conversion the rubber mat over the spindle, pull $10 to download from iTunes, so without the Audio-Technica AT-LP2D- the safety cover off the needle, and the system can pay for itself in just USB LP-to-Digital Recording System, remove a mysterious round black 10 albums. Or 12 or 13 albums. or any of the other USB turntables plastic gizmo. (It was, of course, the I’m going to hand the whole you can now find for between US $90 adapter for 45-rpm records. Now project off to my kids, who would and $300. All I really needed was I just have to find my old 45s.) probably rather rip vinyl than echnica a $15 adapter—to convert two RCA It took me less than 15 minutes to wash windows to earn a little extra t io- D u

jacks (standard for audio equip- unpack and assemble the turntable, spending money. —Tekla S. Perry a

22 NA • IEEE SpEctrum • July 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.orG On Time And Under Budget Keith Bayern won ieee Spectrum’s clock-making contest with brains, elbow grease, and a lot of solder

f it took him, on average, 10 seconds to set up and solder one thing to another, I then Keith Bayern must have gripped his solder gun for a total of 7 hours while building his all-transistor wall-mountable digital clock. “That’s 2700 solder joints,” he told an openly impressed visitor to his demo in the IEEE Spectrum booth at Maker Faire, the science fair for adults sponsored by Make magazine. This year it was held in May in San Mateo, Calif. Bayern was flown there from his home in suburban Seattle as part of his prize as the winner of IEEE Spectrum’s contest for making the best possible clock with generally available components that cost no more than US $100. (A steak dinner was the other part of the prize.) He’d built such a thing quite baYern built his clock clearly presented for scrutiny. Solid recently, after turning the idea over in his mind for a few with transistors, not ics— and reliable, it’s mounted on an em- years, always following the principle of using as little modern “that was the fun of it,” he inently hangable wooden panel and says. watch his presentation stuff as possible and, above all, avoiding integrated circuits. at http://www.spectrum.ieee. now greets all visitors to the Spec- Except for 1970s-vintage LEDs, he says, every component was org/videos. photo: Brian SMale trum office in New York City. You available back in the 1960s. can see how Bayern made it and The contest’s guidelines emphasized accuracy, usability, buy a kit from him, if you like, by going to his site, at http:// attractiveness, and the cool factor. Bayern’s clock won because www.transistor-clock.com. it was at or near the top in every category; the timepiece’s only Bayern, 49, is married and has four children. He got his arguable weakness is its dependence on the timing provided bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Montana State by the 60-hertz signal from the wall socket. University and worked at Dana Corp. for 7 years, Hewlett- One runner-up entry, from Randy Heisch, an engineer in Packard for 16, and Honeywell for 7, with a year of self- Austin, Texas, also takes its time from the wall socket, but it employment thrown in. As he moved into management— presents the result in a beautiful analog display, which uses especially after earning an MBA—he found himself a rapidly moving rotor with synchronized LEDs to paint drifting away from hands-on technical work, and so he concentric rings of light showing the seconds, the minutes, and compensated by redoubling the hobby work he’s done since the hours. It is, however, rather delicate and a little hard to set. he was a kid. “I’ve been immersed in solder fumes since A second runner-up, made by Joe Sousa, an engineer in Lowell, I can remember,” he says, chuckling. Mass., supplies its own time and displays it with Nixie tubes, Late last year he moved to SAIC, an engineering consulting but it’s encumbered by a clunky old U.S. Army power unit. company, where he is a senior principal digital and analog Bayern’s clock won out in the end for the geeky beauty engineer. Now he’s got a lot more technical meat on his plate of its 194 transistors and many, many other components, all than he’s had in a long time. —Philip E. Ross www.spectrum.ieee.orG July 2008 • IEEE SpEctrum • NA 23 books the author goes to some on the directionality of An Exquisite Ear length to analyze. This echoes and their effect the memoir of BBN section of the book is on the cross-correlation cofounder and acoustics primarily about business of signals at the two pioneer Leo Beranek and social relationships, ears. Still, it is clear that including encounters with Beranek’s knowledge and his memoir, by a pioneer of famed musicians such as love of music informed psychoacoustics, is a salient the conductor Herbert his engineering efforts, Treminder of how business von Karajan and the and this synthesis and social collaboration can drive violinist Jascha Heifetz. certainly contributed to technological innovation. For sure, The discussion of concert hall successes. people skills aren’t enough; you also architectural acoustics, This is a memoir, not a need an understanding of the under- however, is disappointing, riDing tHe treatise, and you will not WaVeS: a liFe in lying science to judge which contracts at least to this reader; SoUnD, Science, find in it a deep explanation to accept, never mind with whom it I found it too abstract anD inDUStrY of acoustics and its appli- is best to collaborate. It is the rare and marred by gaps. It By Leo Beranek; cation as an engineering individual who has all the qualities proceeds as if the Sabine MIT Press, 2008; discipline. But if you are needed to succeed at all these things. reverberation formula 256 pp.; US $25.95; looking for a fascinating ISBN: 978-0-262-02629-1 Indeed, Leo Beranek’s character, as (developed by Wallace glimpse into a time unique much as his talent, is the (usually C. Sabine in the 1890s), in American industrial understated) leitmotif of this book. in combination with Beranek’s history and into a life well-lived in After his Depression-era pathfinding work on the acoustical pursuit of the rewards offered by that upbringing in a financially pressed absorption characteristics of building era, you could do worse. It is the spirit Iowa family, a chance encounter with materials, were all that is known of Leo Beranek that shines throughout a well-connected Harvard alumnus about concert hall acoustics. It gives this book—a spirit of confidence, set the stage for Beranek’s move to scant attention to the research of open-mindedness, and intellectual Cambridge, Mass., for graduate school. Yoichi Ando and Manfred Schroeder adventure. —Roger Zimmerman There, during World War II, Beranek and his Harvard colleagues worked under contract for the U.S. military on a project to reduce cockpit noise in a given area relate to one another. For Playing With Cyc instance, it might specify that a cat’s feet so that pilots could communicate are at the bottom, its head and tail at oppo- during flight and battle. This research one of the world’s oldest site ends, and so on. cyc also packs a host constituted foundational work not Ai projects needs your help of tools for reasoning about the subjects, only in noise reduction but also in the some formal, others heuristic. Opencyc is a intelligibility of speech, and it required For more than 20 years, researchers at stripped-down version. Opencyc’s knowledge is good on some marshaling the talents of engineers, cycorp, in Austin, texas, have been develop- ing an artificial-intelligence system to apply a things but not on others. For instance, it technicians, and psychologists. modicum of common sense about the world “knows” about the different kinds of tactics Later, at the Cambridge consulting around us. last year the company made part terrorists use, that blowing things up and firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman of the system available in an open-source taking hostages are different kinds of (now BBN Technologies), Beranek format, so I downloaded the half-gigabyte- events but that both are actions that and his colleagues shifted their focus plus compendium of facts, inference meth- terrorists perform. On the other ods, documentation, and customized Web hand, although it knows that from noise control to architectural server and started poking around. William Shakespeare was a acoustics, a decision which now And you know what? Half a gigabyte isn’t poet, a dramatist, a human seems natural and obvious, but which nearly enough to emulate the brain. being, and the title char- required imagination and courage at cyc contains masses of information on acter of the comic film the time. There were triumphs, such subjects as varied as cats and Anna Karenina, Shakespeare in Love, it linked thematically in hierarchical ontologies, can’t give you a list as improvements to the Tanglewood formal specifications of how the concepts of his plays. Music Shed, and there were also qualified failures, such as the saga of Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) at Lincoln Center, which

24 NA • IEEE SpEctrum • July 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.orG S e G a iM

wireless reading device performs a marketing a reader internationally. : Jane Burton/Getty Re-Kindling A M magic trick: it melts away, leaving only Its reader is also sleeker than the otto B Love of Books the words behind. Kindle, and what’s more, it’s the only ony; ony; S we compare three e-books At only 292 grams (10.3 ounces)— one of the three that allows multiple lighter than most paperbacks— formats of copyrighted material. azon; and find that Amazon’s M Kindle lights our fire the Kindle has a glare-free “e-ink” But, like Sony’s machine, it requires screen that is readable for hours on a computer. The Kindle does not. ookeen; a B kay, I admit it. I think end. Here’s the best part: Say your That’s one reason ours is a three-

left: Amazon’s Kindle is beautiful. flight is stuck on the tarmac and Kindle family. I can e-mail books M All white, all plastic with big you’ve finished your book. You can directly to my technophobic mom

op, fro op, O t next-page/previous-page buttons, this get trapped in a 2-hour conversa- and my kid’s babysitter without their tion about the weather, or you can having to turn on a computer. Up to use Amazon’s free wireless service to six Kindlers can share books, and sample a new best seller and then buy my 11-year-old nephew is sufficiently However, if you just wanted to add real- it for less than half the cover price. enamored with it to hint that he’d give world intelligence to your software—say, for a computer game or spam-recognition I pitted the Kindle against its two up his Nintendo DS to be our fourth. software—a knowledge base like Opencyc main rivals, the Sony PRS-505 and Why such an emotional reaction would be a good place to start. a Bookeen Cybook Gen 3. They’re to a machine? Perhaps it isn’t an —Paul Wallich all priced about the same, between attachment to a machine at all. For US $300 and $400, and they all my own part, the Kindle has helped use the same e-ink technology. me rediscover an old and deep love Sony’s offering—an ultra- of books, something I had lost in modern marvel with a spiffy writing my own best-selling book, metallic case—is sleeker than raising two little boys, working my the Kindle, but I had to look at day job, and worrying about the its controls when I wanted to do looming deadline for my next book. something, whereas on the Kindle The Kindle can’t buy me the turning the page quickly became an time to read, but it makes it easy to unconscious flick of a thumb. The carry a book or two—or 200, and Kindle’s clunkiness is actually a 1000 more on a secure digital card— plus: because it’s wider on one side, a wherever I go. It lets me adjust little like a book, you can wrap your text size for my tired middle-aged hand around it more comfortably. eyes. It can be read one-handed Paris-based Bookeen is an admirable, when wrangling said kids. pioneering e-book company and the Hi. My name is Sherry, and I’m only one of the three companies that’s a Kindleholic. —Sherry Sontag

www.spectrum.ieee.orG July 2008 • IEEE SpEctrum • NA 25 26 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • july 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org tHrEE ENGiNEErS, HuNDrEDS OF rOBOtS, ONE WArEHOuSE Kiva systems wants to revolutionize distribution centers by setting swarms of robots loose on the inventory By EricO GuiZZO

nO hands: machines do the heavy lifting at a staples Denver facility.

www.spectrum.ieee.org july 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 27 alsimer d ystems; this page: Joshua Joshua ystems; this page: s hotography/Kiva hotography/Kiva p den e pread: Joel s previous step up: Kiva’s founders [from left], peter wurman, mick mountz, and raffaello D’Andrea, envision thousands of robots in warehouses.

28 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • july 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org naVigatiOn systeM A camera facing upward reads bar sQuAt AND smArt codes placed under inventory racks to identify them. Another iva’s robots have more than 900 parts, from off -the-shelf camera located at the bottom dc motors to custom-made ball screws. Here’s how the robots’ of the robot views bar codes Kmain systems work. photos: Joshua dalsimer on the fl oor. this location information is combined with readings from other navigation sensors, such as encoders, accelerometers, and rate gyros.

lifting MeChanisM A large screw turns to raise racks of inventory 5 centimeters from the ground. At the same time, the pOwer systeM wheels make the robot rotate Four lead-acid batteries in the opposite direction to power the motors and keep the rack motionless. onboard electronics. when batteries run low, the robot automatically drives to a charging station.

COllisiOn- deteCtiOn systeM infrared sensors and touch-sensitive bumpers stop the driVing systeM robot if people or two brushless dc motors objects get in its way. control independent neoprene rubber wheels, moving the robot at 1.3 meters per second.

he beauty of our system,” This is the demonstration fa- graduate of MIT and the Harvard Raff aello D’Andrea says as cility of Kiva Systems, a start-up Business School, who conceived he paces across the ware- in Woburn, Mass., just north of the idea of using mobile robots house, “is that you don’t Boston, that wants to reinvent the to manage inventory. The third have to walk over to the centuries-old warehouse busi- founder is Peter Wurman, an ex- Tshelves to get things—the shelves ness. Kiva’s idea is simple: by mak- pert in multiagent systems and a come to you.” With that, he motions ing inventory items come to the former professor of computer sci- toward some 200 blue plastic racks warehouse workers rather than ence at North Carolina State Uni- sitting at the center of the building. vice versa, you can fulfill orders versity, in Raleigh. A mechanical whir fi lls the room. faster. A computer cluster keeps Raff , Mick, and Pete, as they’re And then the robots appear. track of all robots and racks on known, form a triumvirate of sorts. Two dozen squat machines, the fl oor, and resource-allocation D’Andrea and Wurman, who are like orange suitcases on wheels, algorithms effi ciently orchestrate called engineering fellows, over- scurry on the floor. They park their movement. see system architecture and algo- under neath the man-high racks “When you see these things mov- rithm development; Mountz, the and start pirouetting; the spin- ing, you think, ‘Oh my goodness, CEO, drives the business. “They’re ning is part of the mechanism that they’re going to hit,’ ” D’Andrea says. a well-oiled machine,” says one jacks the racks off the ground. One “But of course they never do.” engineer at the company. robot hauls shelves with 12-packs D’Andrea should know. He After four years perfecting its of Mountain Dew; another carries wrote the robots’ control algorithm. system, Kiva now faces the chal- bottles of Redken shampoo. They An engineering professor formerly lenge of convincing potential cus- move along straight lines and make at Cornell University and now at tomers to switch from conventional 90-degree turns, maneuvering just ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute warehouse technologies to a fl eet of 15 centimeters from each other. It’s of Technology, in Zurich, he joined mobile robots. Today’s most auto- a bit like Pac-Man. Kiva after meeting Mick Mountz, a mated distribution centers rely on

www.spectrum.ieee.org july 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 29 1 2 3

How Kiva’s vast mazes of conveyor belts, chutes, robots at its 30 000-square-meter their robots but simply call them Robotic and carousels. Human operators fulfillment center in Chambers- “drive units.” If you hear that one waReHouse stand along the conveyors, near burg, Pa., and has equipped an en- “needs a drink,” that just means it’s woRKs inventory shelves, grabbing prod- tire warehouse in Denver with the going to get a battery recharge. 1. A worker ready ucts and putting them into boxes robotic system. Walgreens, the But to understand what the com- to fill an order or totes rolling past them. It’s the drugstore chain, is using hundreds pany does, you have to step into the stands at a picking station with empty assembly-line approach that most of Kiva robots at a distribution cen- warehouse, where Kiva has set up cardboard boxes. warehouse managers are used to, ter in Mt. Vernon, Ill., to prepare its 1000-square-meter demo facility. and it hasn’t changed much in the cases with inventory to restock When I visited this past February, 2. A computer running resource- past 100 years. In fact, for many of stores. And Zappos, the online D’Andrea gave me an overview of allocation algorithms them the idea of handing over their shoe store, is adding Kiva robots to the system. The robots, he explains, dispatches robots inventories to robots is a big depar- part of its massive fulfillment cen- navigate the warehouse by pointing to pick up inventory ture, if not a crazy proposition. ter in Shepherdsville, Ky., which cameras at the floor that read two- racks and carry them “Kiva has an inherent degree began operation three years ago dimensional bar-coded stickers to the picking station. of flexibility that a lot of the more and now houses 4.2 million shoes, laid out by hand 1 meter from each 3. Robots with the traditional storage and picking handbags, and clothing items. other, in a grid. The robots relay the requested racks line technologies don’t,” says William “If I’d known about Kiva back encoded information wirelessly to up at the picking station, and the first L. Vincent, a principal with then,” says Craig Adkins, vice a computer cluster that functions unit positions itself in Tompkins Associates, a supply- president of fulfillment operations both as a dispatcher and a traffic front of the worker. chain-technology consultancy in at Zappos, “I’d have built the entire controller. It instructs, for instance, Orlando, Fla. “But many customers building with nothing but Kiva.” robot No. 1051 to bring rack No. 308 are scared of the latest whiz-bang D’Andrea says that this is the to worker No. 12—without colliding toys and prefer to wait until they first time hundreds of autonomous with robot No. 1433, which is cross- get a little bit more history.” robots have been put to work to- ing its path. Maybe that’s one reason Kiva gether on a commercial applica- To fulfill an order, a human avoids the label of “robotics tion. He probably knows more operator stands at a pick-and- company.” “We invented a solution about the orange, wheeled ma- pack station on the perimeter of for fulfillment,” Mountz insists. chines than anyone else, but with the warehouse. Robots crisscross He says that the Internet has made a hectic travel schedule, he’s one of the floor—they even use eleva- shopping effortless for consumers the few Kivans—as the staff calls tors to get to a mezzanine—and and now it’s time for the back end to itself—who has never seen the ro- find specific racks to carry to the catch up. Kiva claims that its system bots in action at a customer’s site. station. When the first robot po- makes it easier to set up and manage “As soon as we have an installation sitions itself in front of the work- a warehouse and that it can boost with over 1000 robots,” he says, er, a laser pointer on a metal pole order-fulfillment speed to three “I’ll be one of the first there.” shines a red dot on a product. Once times that of conveyor-based opera- the worker has retrieved the item, tions. “We turned what is normally iva’s Woburn facility the robot departs and another one a serial process into a massively is a typical technology takes its place. parallel process,” he says. start-up. Engineers park In a typical conveyor-based op- Mountz’s pitch appears to be their bicycles in their eration, a worker can pick 200 to working. Since 2004, Kiva has cubicles, take breaks 400 items per hour. The Kiva ro- amassed US $18 million in fund- K at a Ping-Pong table, and spice bots can present a new item to a ing from Bain Capital and other in- their talk with such industry jar- worker every 6 seconds, leading to vestors. It has also signed up three gon as “eaches” (individual items) a base rate of 600 picks per hour, heavyweight customers. The office and “sortation” (separating inven- with Walgreens reaching a rate of supply giant Staples uses 500 Kiva tory into groups). They don’t name more than 700. Kiva says a large

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warehouse performing 200 000 cause of the way they sit on shelves, control theory. “To architect the 4. A laser pointer picks a day would require two robotic manipulators still can’t beat whole system,” he says, “it took us hanging from 75-person, 8-hour shifts if it used real arms and hands. many, many late nights.” above on a metal pole shines a red conveyors. With Kiva’s technol- “They factored what robots are dot on the product ogy, just 25 people a shift would good at compared to what people iva’s technology began to be retrieved. be enough to get the job done. The are good at, and they realized you in early 2002 as a bunch 5. The worker grabs company says equipping a 10 000- don’t have to stop with one robot— of diagrams and queuing- the product from the square-meter facility costs between you can have thousands of robots,” theory equations on a dry- rack and scans its bar $4 million and $6 million, which is says Rodney Brooks, a professor of erase board at Mountz’s code to verify that it less than what a conveyor system robotics at MIT and cofounder of K one-bedroom apartment in Palo is the correct item. would go for. iRobot, the maker of the Roomba Alto, Calif. Mountz stood for hours 6. The worker D’Andrea says that setting up a vacuum cleaner. “These guys are in front of that board, looking for places the item into warehouse becomes much easier really farseeing in bringing all those new ways of speeding up the pick- a cardboard box, which also receives with the robots. Building a conveyor mind jumps together at once.” and-pack queues of warehouse a shipping label. system can take 12 to 18 months for a Robots are not new to ware- operations. large warehouse; a Kiva deployment, houses. Traditional material- His obsession grew out of his 7. The robot at the front of the line drives by contrast, takes weeks rather than handling vendors, as well as a hand- experience at the Internet grocery away, and the one months. Last year, when Staples had ful of start-ups, offer self-driven store Webvan. Despite its adoption behind it takes its to relocate its Kiva operation from forklifts, pallet-manipulator arms, of the latest warehouse technolo- place. When the order one end of the building to another, automated storage-and-retrieval gies, Webvan’s cost of fulfilling is completed, the the engineers simply placed bar shelves, and other systems. Why orders ran three times as high cardboard box travels to the shipping area codes on the hallway leading from has it taken so long for robots like as what the business plan had on a conveyor or is the old to the new site and told the Kiva’s to appear? estimated. In 2001, the company carried by a robot. robots to do the rest. “Technologically, there’s no rea- became an infamous casualty of photos: Joshua dalsimer A Kiva warehouse, D’Andrea son why Kiva couldn’t have hap- the dot-com bust. adds, can also self-organize. The pened 10 or 15 years ago,” says “I thought, let’s start fresh,” computer cluster tracks high- and Scott Friedman, CEO of Seegrid, Mountz recalls. “How could any low-selling products and stores a start-up in Pittsburgh that de- item in an inventory become avail- them accordingly. It directs the ro- veloped pallet-carrying robots able to anybody in the warehouse bots to park racks that contain popu- guided by an advanced vision sys- at any time?” The answer, he fig- lar products near the pick-and-pack tem. “However, labor costs and ured, was that items had to “walk stations and place less popular ones labor scarcity have made it more and talk on their own.” But how to at the back of the warehouse. appealing to put together some old do that? It’s fun to watch the robots, tech in a new way now.” He brainstormed the possibilities. but the human workers filling the D’Andrea disagrees. “If that If labor were really cheap, he could orders are also impressive: they was the case, Kiva would have pack a warehouse with, say, 5000 watch for the laser dot, pick a prod- been invented a long time ago in people, each holding one object. “I’d uct, scan its bar code, throw it into Europe, where labor costs are shout, ‘Toothpaste!’ and a person a box, and start over. The humans normally much higher.” More would bring it to me,” he recalls are rather robotic themselves. I ask important, he adds, was the thinking one day. Another possi- D’Andrea: Why not automate this emergence of powerful but inex- bility, suggested by a friend, was job too? Why not run a warehouse pensive electronics—wireless sys- transforming the warehouse into a like a semiconductor fab, with every- tems, guidance sensors, embedded gigantic air-hockey table and have thing untouched by human hands? processors—and the recent devel- products gliding around the place. He says that because products vary opment of novel algorithms in the Those ideas were clearly too far-out, so much in size and shape and be- fields of multiagent systems and but they helped Mountz zero in on a www.spectrum.ieee.org july 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 31 Visit our website for thousands of standard products www.picoelectronics.com TRANSFORMERS & Miniaturized INDUCTORS From 1/4" X 1/4" • Surface Mount Plug-in • Toriodal • Insulated Leads

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weight lifting: Kiva’s standard robot can lift 454 kilograms; its bigger model [above] can hold DC-DC CONVERTERS High Power three times as much, or 1362 kg. photo: Joshua dalsimer Regulated, Up to 400 Watts Up to 100 volts Standard INdustrial Military promising concept: motorized trays to ferry that could run on the central computer, products throughout the warehouse. What on the robots, and on PCs at the picking he needed, he finally realized, were mobile stations. The agents would exchange in- robots—lots of them. formation but act independently, each try- DC-DC CONVERTERS Before building any prototypes, Mountz ing to optimize its own tasks. They also High Voltage Up to 10,000 VCD Output called up Peter Wurman, an old MIT room- adopted heuristic methods, like greedy Up to 300 Watts mate then at North Carolina State University, algorithms that can make good—but not NEW Dual Outputs New Regulated Output to find out what kind of software would be always the best—decisions to perform able to orchestrate so many robots. He flew tasks such as assigning racks to stations. several times to Wurman’s home in North Mountz hired a contractor to prepare Carolina, where they’d retreat to Wurman’s computer simulations of the system. The office in the attic. “We’d spend the weekend results stunned him. His robotic ware- scribbling ideas and drinking a lot of coffee,” house looked as if it could operate better AC-DC POWER SUPPLIERS Linear • Switches • Open Frame Mountz says. than any real one. On 15 July 2002, he filed Low Profile • Up to 200 Watts They eventually focused on the idea of U.S. Patent No. 6950722, which described a a central computer that would wirelessly “real-time parallel-processing order fulfill- command all the robots in real time, so ment and inventory management system.” that the human operators would never It had a crude drawing of the robots, which stand idle. There was just one problem. looked like short trash cans on wheels. He A large warehouse would involve dozens called his business Distrobot Systems. POWER FACTOR of workers, hundreds of robots, and thou- CORRECTED MODULES sands of products. Finding the best way he robotic trays Mountz Universal Input • 47-440 hz to 1000 Watts • 99 Power Factor of organizing the inventory and mobiliz- envisioned had their prob- ing the robots would be really difficult. In lems. For one thing, they would fact, it’s a type of problem that mathema- occupy too much space in a ticians call NP-hard: solving it exactly is warehouse. They would also often impractical. T be too costly, because each would need Call toll free Mountz and Wurman came up with its own motors, batteries, controllers, and 800-431-1064 methods to cut corners. They won’t re- communications module. To solve these for PICO Catalog veal all the details, but they offer some issues, he decided that the trays could be Fax 914-738-8225 hints. Instead of relying on a single piece stacked up to form shelves, and a hand- of software that centralizes all the deci- ful of mobile robots could be used to move PICO Electronics,Inc. sions, they envisioned software agents the shelf units around. 143 Sparks Ave, Pelham, NY 10803-1837 E-Mail: [email protected] 32 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • mAy 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org

CYAN prints as Pantone 3268C He began Googling, looking for proj- the rack-lifting mechanism, optimized stickers. If, for instance, a robot is a bit off ects involving mobile robots, and became the wireless module, added safety and to the right, the control system nudges it fascinated with videos of RoboCup, the power-management features, and most to the left. international robotic soccer champion- important, came up with a totally new The control system also reports its ship. One day in the fall of 2003, he men- navigation and control system. readings to the computer cluster to share tioned the videos to another MIT friend, Their innovation was to put bar-code that information with other robots. This Marjolein C.H. van der Meulen, now a stickers on the floor and equip the ro- distributed-control approach improves professor of mechanical and aerospace bots with cameras to read them. As the their navigation capabilities. Say a robot engineering at Cornell, who promptly robots move, they read the encoded in- sees certain stickers off to the left. Instead said, “You have to meet this RoboCup formation to learn their coordinates in of simply correcting its course by turning guy at Cornell!” The colleague in question the warehouse. At the same time, the ro- to the right, the robot first checks what was Raffaello D’Andrea, who had led the bots’ control systems determine how far other robots see—what the “wisdom of Cornell team to no less than four Robo- off their bodies are from the center of the the crowd” is. If most of them see cen- Cup world championships. That year, D’Andrea had just begun a sabbatical at MIT, and Mountz arranged to meet him for half an hour on campus. They talked for three hours. They met the Penn State | Online next day, and again the following week- end. D’Andrea was hooked. “Mine was probably the shortest-lived sabbatical of all time,” he quips. In late 2003, Wurman and D’Andrea officially joined Distrobot. The company set up shop in a small warehouse in Bur- lington, Mass., not far from iRobot. In fact, they had chosen the Boston area because of the robotics expertise found there. The warehouse was just a big empty space, which they heated as little as possible to keep costs down. “It was so cold we kept our drinks in a little side room,” D’Andrea recalls. The founders hired two engineers and one computer scientist and got to work. The first weeks consisted mostly of brain- storming. Progress was slow. One day, Mountz gathered everybody and said, “Stop doing stuff on the whiteboard. You guys should do less thinking and more coding.” He wanted to see something ac- new Online Master’s Degree in tually doing something. D’Andrea and Wurman, on the other hand, were wary of a rushed design Systems engineering that could lead to problems in the long term. “From this tension we arrived at Advance Your Career an engineering philosophy that lasts to this day,” Wurman says. “We do rapid Gain a quality education in a convenient online format prototyping and demonstrations, and Apply your skills to any engineering discipline then a cycle of deep thinking and ma- jor improvements.” Build a professional network with classmates To build the first prototypes, Mountz hired some of his MIT fraternity brothers Become a leader in your organization who worked in robotics. The initial models were metal boxes on wheels, the kind used in motorized wheelchairs. They had no navigation system and no collision- Apply now for fall 2008 semester. detection capability. The machines could www.worldcampus.psu.edu/IEEE move only from one point to another and often sent boxes flying off racks. Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and the diversity of its workforce. U.Ed.OUT 08-1341jmb/bjm D’Andrea and his team set out to re- design the robots entirely. They modified www.spectrum.ieee.org mAy 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 33 tered stickers, the robot figures in diameter with a nut assembly Kiva intern got two dozen robots to that the stickers are in the right filled with ball bearings, custom- dance to the score of Tchaikovsky’s place and that the shift in position machined from hard-anodized alu- The Nutcracker. is due to inherent imperfections minum at an undisclosed shop in Running the robots in real ware- with its own hardware—its cam- Massachusetts. One dc motor turns houses has shown Kiva how cus- era may be off center or its wheels the screw, raising the rack about tomers can push its system to the misaligned. The robot then adjusts 5 cm into the air. To prevent the rack limit. One client posted a lower its own control parameters to nav- from rotating while the screw turns, price for a product on its Web site igate more accurately. In fact, the the control system causes the robot by mistake, attracting hordes of machines drive so meticulously to rotate in the opposite direction at shoppers—and sending the Kiva ro- that their rubber wheels leave pre- the exact speed required to keep the bots after the same few racks, which cisely aligned tracks on the ware- rack motionless. had to be replenished over and over. house floor. The current production model Another time, workers at a custom- The greatest advantage of this can lift 454 kilograms and travel at er site started driving forklift trucks approach is that the robots are me- 1.3 meters per second. Kiva builds through a section restricted to the chanically simpler, and therefore the machines at its warehouse. robots. Eventually, a robot was hit cheaper. Rather than equipping Assembly takes just a few hours. and nearly destroyed. As engineers, the robots with expensive, high- Then comes a series of tests. De- D’Andrea and his team expect such precision parts to ensure they drive signed to last 10 years, the robots problems to crop up, he says. “More in straight lines, Kiva lets the con- must drive on a floor scattered with late nights, I guess.” trol software take care of the varia- 1-cm-thick plywood squares while tions and imperfections in the hard- carrying half a ton of patio paving iva has evolved sig- ware components. “We don’t have stones. “They bounce and rattle nificantly since its first to buy the best motors, the best gear quite a bit,” says Brett Anderson, days. In 2005, it moved early days: boxes to make the robots reliable,” a senior mechanical engineer. “It’s to its much larger home clockwise says Dennis Polic, one of the electri- like an off-road course.” in Woburn. It also got rid from left: peter wurman prepares cal engineers. “The control system In other test protocols—designed K of the Distrobot name—“People were inventory for a takes care of that.” more for fun than for technical thinking we’re building humanoids 2005 trial at The control system also takes reasons—the team aligned a dozen to carry boxes,” Mountz says—to staples; raffaello care of another nagging issue: robots and made them oscillate like become Kiva. That year, it also signed D’Andrea wrestles keeping the rack stable while the a sine wave while engineers “surfed” up its first customer, Staples, followed with robot prototypes in robot lifts it off the ground. This is them. To evaluate a stronger ro- by Walgreens in 2007 and Zappos early 2004; the necessary because the lifting mech- bot capable of lifting three times as this year. The company now has first production anism consists of a ball screw that much weight, or 1362 kg, a dozen 80 employees, a number expected units await a rotates to raise the rack above it. It’s employees climbed on top of the to nearly double this year. firmware update in march 2005. an intricate piece of machinery—a robot as it went about its business. This past April, Kiva shipped its photos: Kiva systems threaded shaft 30.5 centimeters And during the holidays last year, a 1000th robot. It says several potential clients that want to remain anony- mous are currently testing its sys- tem. D’Andrea is confident that more and more Kiva robots will make it into warehouses. “We’ve simulated huge warehouses with thousands of robots,” D’Andrea says. “I can just imagine 10 years from now—people will start writing papers about PDE [partial differential equation] fluid models of Kiva robots, just as it was done with highway traffic.” And he adds that although Kiva is not about “cool robots,” he enjoys spending time with them. “To me, it’s just beautiful. It’s like a dance,” he says. “That’s really what motivates me. To be able to make something like this—it’s human achievement. It’s a look-what-we- can-do sort of thing.” o

To Probe FurTher To see videos of the Kiva robots in action, go to http:// www.spectrum.ieee.org/jul08/kiva.

34 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • july 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org 36 NA • iEEE Sp iEEE • NA E ctrum • july 2008 july • ctrum www.spectrum.ieee.org

photo: Matthew Mahon; digital illustration: sandbox studio MACHINIMA’S MOVIE MOGULS a new Breed of filmmaKer is BYpassing tHe actors, elaBorate sets, and eVen tHe cameras in faVor of a couple of decent computers and a Video game. tHeir moVies maY surprise You

t’s a warm January afternoon in Austin, Texas, The aroma of disinfectant may have dissipated, where another movie is being shot. That’s not so but the place still suggests more slacker hangout than unusual; with its laid-back pace and funky vibe—the fi lmmaking enterprise. The only pieces of equipment city’s motto is “Keep Austin Weird”—this university in sight are three Microsoft Xbox 360 video-game con- town has become a hive of independent fi lmmaking soles, assorted Xbox controllers, a 3- gigahertz Hewlett- I over the past decade, sparked by the success of local Packard Blackbird desktop computer, and the oblig- directors Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez. atory lumpy couch. There’s no sign of the usual Both directors built their reputations in part on their trappings of Hollywood moviemaking: no actors, no willingness to experiment with low-budget digital ani- stylists, no catering table. Also missing are sets, cos- mation and special eff ects. tumes, and props. That’s because at Rooster photo:illustration: Matthew sandboxstudio Mahon; But even by Austin’s anything-goes, do- BY daVid Teeth, the cinematic process occurs almost it-yourself standards, today’s shoot is nota- KusHner entirely within that HP computer. bly bootstrapped. For one thing, it’s being Burns and the four other young geeks made above the Pita Pit sandwich shop, overlook- intently twiddle their Xbox controllers, moving ing a busy downtown street. The movie studio here their video-game characters on screen in carefully at Rooster Teeth Productions consists of a tiny win- choreographed moves. Technically, all five are dowless room at the end of a hallway, in what used to playing the science-fiction shooter game Halo 3, be the restroom of a Wendy’s burger joint. “We had but they’re also making a movie. As the players put to run 30 gallons of bleach in here to get out the smell,” the characters through their motions, the computer says Michael “Burnie” Burns, a stocky 34-year-old in records all the action, which will then be edited and a T-shirt and beat-up jeans who cofounded Rooster paired with dialogue and a soundtrack into a short Teeth fi ve years ago. animated video.

www.spectrum.ieee.org july 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 37 of thousands of animated films over the last decade. In recent years, machinima has blossomed into a tech- centric international subcul- ture. With little more than a video game, a computer, and some imagination, anybody can create machinima. For most machinimators, it’s more a labor of love than a moneymaking venture. But as video-game animation technol- ogy aims for Pixar-like quality, machinima is now finding a broader audience. Episodes of the popular TV series South Park and CSI: New York have featured machinima scenes. This May, the cable channel Cinemax premiered a machin- ima shot entirely in Second Life, reportedly paying the director, Douglas Gayeton, $200 000 for the broadcast rights. This fall, the grandiosely named Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences, a group that nurtures the new genre and its practitio- POP ART: rooster teeth’s gus sorola, matt Hullum, and mike Burns [from left] have turned do-it-yourself ners, will host its biggest-ever filmmaking into a business. photo: Matthew Mahon film festival. Of all the start-ups making a commercial go of machin- It’s a new genre of filmmaking called machinima, and it’s one ima, Rooster Teeth seems to be the most highly regarded and of the brashest DIY developments to hit moviemaking since may be the only one that generates consistent profits. It all Roger Corman pointed a camera at a guy in a rubber monster started about six years ago, when Burns and a few buddies suit and catapulted himself into B-movie history. What’s making started making an improbably funny series based on Halo it possible is the latest crop of popular video games and Internet called Red vs. Blue, or RvB, as it’s known to fans. environments, like Halo 3, the human-simulation game The Sims, In the show, two teams of hapless soldiers stuck in a kind of and the virtual world Second Life. These products all have deeply wartime purgatory consider their existential place in the uni- immersive environments powered by sophisticated real-time verse as they battle each other and the occasional alien. From three-dimensional graphics engines, and they usually come with the first episode in April 2003, the program proved an instant free video-editing software and other tools that let players mod- cult hit, and it ran for five seasons. Hundreds of thousands ify the games’ characters, environments, and sound and then of fans worldwide eagerly awaited the uploading of each new create and record their own scenarios. Machinimators exploit 6-minute episode to the company’s Web site. those free tools to produce animations that span the gamut of At the end of May, fans rushed to the site once again, as Rooster film types, including short comedic riffs, serial sitcoms, and Teeth debuted a follow-up series, Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction. “We even 2-hour feature-length films. wanted the next phase of RvB to have more of a ‘movie’ feel to Machinima (a mashup of “machine” and “cinema,” pro- it,” says Rooster Teeth cofounder Matt Hullum. And so it does: nounced muh-SHIN-ah-muh or mah-SHEEN-ah-muh) isn’t the editing and pacing are crisper, the scenes and sound effects intended for the silver screen; most of the films get downloaded are more sophisticated, and the action and dramatic tension get or streamed via the Internet and watched on a computer moni- kicked up a notch. But the trademark absurdist banter that made tor. And they’re cheap to make: instead of pouring millions of the original series a huge hit is still there. dollars and many months into a film, Rooster Teeth may spend Rooster Teeth is privately held and won’t release financial US $5000 and a week’s time on a 5-minute video—and that cov- details, but Burns says it now makes enough from DVD sales ers everything from the first-draft script to the final formatting of Red vs. Blue and other productions, as well as commercial and uploading of the finished film to the Web. work for video-game companies, to support a full-time team of Who makes machinima? High school kids getting together six. Their work has appeared on network and cable TV and at in basement rec rooms, adults blowing off steam on week- New York City’s Lincoln Center, and the company’s community ends, and a few scrappy start-ups like Rooster Teeth. Nobody site now boasts 650 000 registered members and about 750 000 knows exactly how many machinimators are out there, but as video downloads each week. Rooster Teeth was even commis- a group, they are incredibly prolific, churning out hundreds sioned in 2004 to create a short introductory video for a speech

38 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • july 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org that Bill Gates gave to Microsoft employees. premiered to a sold-out crowd at “They are the pioneers,” says Paul Marino, Lincoln Center in 2004, Graham himself an accomplished machinima producer Leggat, then director of commu- and now the executive director of the Academy nications for the Film Society of of Machinima Arts & Sciences. “They not only Lincoln Center, called it “truly as made this a pastime, they made it a business.” sophisticated as Samuel Beckett.” RvB, like most machinima, n the Rooster Teeth studio on this January sprouts from the desire to reach afternoon, two guys move their Halo soldiers inside a video game and manipu- I around on screen as a voice actor in a nearby late it into something personal, or sound booth reads from a script. Today’s proj- at least more original or funny—the ect is a short instructional video on how to play same urge that compels car enthu- Grifball, a multiplayer game that Burns invented siasts to pimp their rides and fash- to run inside Halo 3. Think rugby, except with ionistas to accessorize. That desire gravity hammers and energy swords. Burns, isn’t new to the gaming world: play- who wrote the script, also directs the take. “Give ers have been hacking into com- me some more hoo-hahs at the end of the last puter games for at least 25 years. For line,” he tells the voice actor after one take. example, in 1991, John Romero and Halo’s software and development tools don’t John Carmack started a legendary allow for an enormous range of expressiveness. game company called Id Software, in The soldiers’ faces are entirely covered by face Mesquite, Texas, and the two, former masks, so each player indicates that his char- game hackers themselves, made spe- acter is talking by bobbing its head up and cifi c concessions to gamers in order to down roughly in time with the dialogue. “It’s make such modifi cations easier. like puppeteering,” explains Hullum. For Id’s 1993 fi rst-person shooter game Today’s how-to video features two of the Doom, Carmack created a subsystem of main characters from Red vs. Blue. Although media fi les called WADs, for “where’s all the plots are sometimes punctuated by more the data?” The WADs were separate from or less random violence, the characters’ the core engine, the chunk of software that sardonic banter is what separates Rooster renders the 3-D objects and tells them how Teeth’s work from the competition. In one to move around. WADs let players swap memorable episode, the Red and Blue diff erent images of characters, props, and teams call a truce and then stand around in other objects without damaging the engine. an uncomfortable circle, guns at the ready, One industrious player tweaked Doom’s debating the absurdity of their situation: demons from hell to re-create Star Wars, Grif: “So now we’re forced to work complete with Death Star. together? How ironic.” Id also included a function that allowed Simmons: “No, that’s not ironic! gamers to record clips, or demos, of their Ironic would be if we had to work own game play. Users soon began swapping together to hurt each other!” demos of their death matches, just like week- Donut: “No, ironic would be if, end fi shermen trading snapshots of their big instead of that guy kidnapping Lopez, catch. From there it was only a small step Lopez kidnapped him.” to making movielike clips. When Id’s next Sarge: “I think it would be ironic game franchise, Quake, debuted in 1996, gam- if our guns didn’t shoot bullets but ers started modifying the content of the game, instead squirted a healing salve that recording the action, and creating scenarios cured all wounds.” that looked like little movies. Caboose: “I think it would be ironic Quake machinima quickly proliferated, and if everyone was made of iron!” other game developers began to see the benefi t The scene then cuts to 2 hours later, of such user-created content. Their main incen- which fi nds the soldiers still locked tive was the only one that really matters in a in their semantic standoff. Blue competitive industry: money. “A steady stream team leader Church, in a deliberate of new content keeps the game on store shelves and slightly testy voice, attempts and relevant even years after its release,” says to sum up the consensus: “OK. We Jeff Morris, producer of the multiplayer shooter all agree that while the current sit- Unreal Tournament 3, from Epic Games. uation is not totally ironic, the fact Encouraging machinima can also broaden the that we now have to work together appeal of computer games, often dismissed as being is odd in an unexpected way that mindlessly passive. Eric Lempel, director of Sony defi es our normal circumstances. Is everybody happy with that?” BLARG! the machinima series red vs. blue proved an instant cult classic. iMages: rooster teeth When the series’ second season

www.spectrum.ieee.org july 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 39 PlayStation Network Operations, a great way for our game franchise to get rep- says, “With games, we now have the resented in a whole new light,” says Bungie’s opportunity to open up the experi- Brian Jerrard, whose job is to interact with play- ence to players and allow them to get ers, including machinimators. “There are peo- creative in their own way.” ple who probably heard about Halo for the fi rst Michael Gartenberg, an analyst time in Red vs. Blue.” with JupiterResearch, a research fi rm For those games that don’t include video- based in New York City, views the editing tools, machinimators often invent their machinima craze as part of the larger own. Pawfect Films’ San Andreas Studios is a set trend in user-generated content. “The of tools for shooting fi lms within the ultraviolent ability for users to generate their own action game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The content is becoming a standard part of original game doesn’t allow for much custom- the equation,” says Gartenberg. “It’s not ization of the characters, but with San Andreas something everyone will do, but for a lot Studios you can create new characters on the fl y of users it becomes an important way to and control an entire cast in real time. diff erentiate [themselves] from competi- “Games are transitioning away from the tors. You’re not just playing but partici- movie metaphor into the hobbyist metaphor,” pating in the game.” says Will Wright, creator of The Sims and the upcoming Spore, which will enable players o create machinima, Rooster to create worlds and creatures from the DNA Teeth does essentially no coding. level on up. “In terms of the editing experience TSome machinimators do call upon and sharing with other people, it’s intensely more advanced special-eff ects techniques, motivating for people.” such as motion capture, and on such ded- icated machinima tools as Moviestorm, ack in Austin, a production break iClone, and Antics3D. Others hack into the gives the Rooster Teeth guys a chance video-game engines to get them to do what Bto eff use about just how easy it has they want. But you don’t have to. Rooster become to make digital movies. They should Teeth takes the purist approach, refusing know: before turning to machinima, Hullum to modify the graphics with anything other and a few others served time in Hollywood than what’s bundled with the game engine. working on big-budget fi lms. Halo 3 and Half-Life 2, another sci-fi In a typical week, Burns will write up shooter, are preferred by many machina- a script on a Sunday night and polish it on mators because the built-in software is Monday. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the so fl exible. Bellevue, Wash.–based Valve team will record the audio; Burns does the Corp., creator of Half-Life 2, off ers a free voices for several RvB characters, includ- software development kit called FacePoser, ing Church and Lopez, while Hullum to animate characters’ facial expressions, voices Sarge and a few others. Eighty from the droop of the eyelids to the clench minutes of audio will be distilled down of the jaw. There’s also a lip-synching func- to a 6-minute episode. tion, so that the character actually looks Thursday will be spent “fi lming” the like it’s speaking. sequences within a game according to the With Halo 3, the creators at Bungie script. Rooster Teeth uses three Xbox 360 Software, in Kirkland, Wash., included a machines that are networked together. powerful new function called Saved Film. As One machine is the director’s box, which with other games, you can record your game functions as the shoot’s “camera”; data play as a data fi le for later viewing and editing. fi les created during the shoot are stored But Saved Film also lets you change the cam- on a nearby PC. The other two Xboxes era’s point of view after the fact, so you can each run up to four video-game charac- replay a scene from any angle or perspective— ters—the “actors” in the fi lm. Even this zooming in on an explosion, say, or freezing a amount of technology is pretty elab- scene—and then save that new sequence for orate for machinima, notes Gustavo later playback and editing. You can also record “Gus” Sorola, Rooster Teeth’s desig- a scene through one character’s eyes, reverse nated tech whiz. When the company the camera angle, and then play it back through got started back in 2003, it relied on another character’s eyes. Burns’s old 2.6-GHz Pentium 4 com- Bungie encourages the kind of aftermar- puter with 1 gigabyte of RAM. “All you ket videos that Rooster Teeth produces. “It’s really need is a computer and a video capture card,” Sorola says. HOWDY, NEIGHBOR! in rooster teeth’s the Again, creating machinima at strangerhood, the cast have forgotten who they are. Rooster Teeth is not a matter of sling- iMages: rooster teeth ing code; it’s simply a group of players

40 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • july 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org running through sequences in a multiplayer game that they’ve to finish, including writing a script, developing characters, modified into a production set. On a real set, actors follow tape and choosing shots and camera angles. marks on the floor that indicate where they should stand. In a Some machinimators view the video-game restrictions as machinima game, the director may fire lines of bullet holes into an odd form of flattery or as a validation of their work—they’ve the ground to show the characters where to go. now moved sufficiently above the radar that mainstream com- Once all the filming is done, the piece is edited using Adobe panies are taking notice. But even long-time machinima cre- Premiere. The finished piece may run to about 3 GB of data, ators say it’s a necessary step. “Before there was a potential which gets compressed down to a more palatable 10 megabytes liability because, if you read the user license agreements, they for online downloading and viewing. To facilitate playback, the said you could only play a game,” not modify it, says Marino film gets encoded in three formats: Flash, Windows Media, and of the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences. “Now people QuickTime. can create legally.” Keeping the many fans satisfied means more than just crank- ing out new films. Rooster Teeth also has to maintain a robust infrastructure that can support the down- loading of about 500 terabytes of data each macHinima sprouts month. The site previously ran off of file servers from tHe same urge in Sacramento, Calif., and Washington, D.C., but recently the company moved its servers to Austin tHat compels car to give Sorola easier access to the hardware. At entHusiasts to pimp tHeir one point, he had to rebuild the disk array—the rides and fasHionistas servers’ storage system of disk drives—because heavy to accessorize traffic on the site had slowed download rates to a crawl. “It’s a problem that few people have,” he says. But Rooster Teeth vastly prefers that fans use its site— s a long day of filming at Rooster Teeth comes to a close, or better yet, buy its DVDs—rather than viewing its videos on the entire team is tired and cranky. Making machinima public sites like YouTube. In fact, the company fights a con- Acan be as tedious as shooting a live-action film, as the stant battle against the free distribution of its videos by oth- sequences are filmed over and over again to capture just the ers, regularly sending requests to YouTube to take the videos right look and feel. Moving the characters around is hampered down. In any event, many gamers seem to prefer the DVD for- by the fact that they weren’t exactly programmed to be emo- mat, because it lets them watch several machinima videos at a tive actors. Just to get a Halo 3 soldier to lower his weapon, the time, offers behind-the-scenes footage, and carries translations puppeteer must perform a contortionist combination of moves, in French, German, and Spanish. holding down so many buttons on the controller that he has to use his nose to make it all work. (Try this at home: simultane- s machinima matures and its popularity grows, game ously hold down the left and right bumpers, the left stick, the companies are beginning to set some rules on just what d-pad, and the A button for 2 to 3 seconds.) Afilmmakers can do with their products. Last year, for Just as they’re shooting the final sequence, an errant soldier instance, both Microsoft and Blizzard Entertainment, the pow- wanders into the background on screen. The character isn’t erhouse developer behind the massively multiplayer online under the control of anyone at Rooster Teeth, so it’s assumed franchise World of Warcraft, released restrictive new guidelines to be an admirer who somehow found his way into their pri- aimed at machinima creators. vate online game room and decided to see what was up. It’s the In exchange for a “personal, nonexclusive, nontransferable machinima equivalent of the annoying bystander who waves license to use and display Game Content and to create deriva- and mouths “Hi, Mom!” as the camera pans a crowd scene. tive works based upon Game Content,” Microsoft now prohibits “Um, we have a fan who made it onto the production set,” machinimators from, among other things, reverse-engineering Hullum says wearily. their titles, creating anything Microsoft might deem obscene, “We’ll have to kill him,” Burns replies. With that, he dis- or selling the machinima works. (Rooster Teeth is one of the charges his video weapon into the fan’s character, who hits few machinima developers not bound by Microsoft’s ban on the ground in a splat. The character is gone for now, but the profits, having cut a deal early on to use Halo for the Red vs. moment this video goes online, that fan will almost certainly Blue series.) Blizzard, based in Irvine, Calif., similarly prohib- be waiting, searching for his moment in the sun. its the sale of machinima and requires that content reflect the Although their art form has been around for more than a equivalent of a T (for Teen) rating. decade, for Rooster Teeth and other machinimators, it’s still the The upshot is that despite the DIY nature of machinima, beginning. “As real-time rendering approaches photo-realism, the medium is not as freewheeling as traditional filmmak- it will get crazier and crazier,” predicts Burns. It’s just a matter ing. It’s hard to imagine Sony setting rules on what kinds of of time before machinima supplants carbon-based performers, scenes directors can shoot with its high-definition cameras, he says. “Who wants an actor that gets old?” o for instance, but that’s exactly what the game companies are doing to machinimators. To circumvent the intellectual prop- TO PROBE FURTHER A complete archive of Red vs. Blue and erty issues that arise from using video games, a few soft- new episodes of Red vs. Blue: Reconstruction are on the Web site ware developers have come up with specialized programs http://rvb.roosterteeth.com. (Note: The videos contain lots of pro- istockphoto for creating machinima. With the Moviestorm package, for fane existential banter and some violence.) And if you’d like to try instance, created by the Cambridge, England, company Short your hand at machinima, start with Machinima for Dummies, by Fuze, the user can produce a machinima-style film from start Hugh Hancock and Johnnie Ingram (Wiley, 2007).

www.spectrum.ieee.org july 2008 • iEEE SpEctrum • NA 41

here Are the fAvorites of veterAn technology writer STeven Levy, who wAs too modest to include Any of his own six books on the list GrEat tEch

Any great nonfiction book combines education with I0entertainment. in drafting my books A-list of general-interest books about technology, i considered impact and significance but The Pencil: A History of origins and skillfully follows its Design and Circumstance progress from early appearances Henry Petroski (Knopf, 1989) gave still more weight to the to a product of the emerging reading experience. this is a age of assembly-line industries. collection where lay readers arly in his exhaustive study He is less interested in the E of the invention, refinement, cultural history of the pencil can appreciate each entry— production, and commercial than in its steady evolution. and engineers, programmers, history of this humble and The cast of characters is not and other tech professionals indispensable writing implement, necessarily the most colorful Henry Petroski claims, “It is bunch. A notable exception is can’t afford to miss a single one. by trying to understand simple Henry David Thoreau, whose ideas and principles in terms of name is associated not only the most complex of examples with Walden Pond but also the and issues that we tend to leading 19th-century pencil- feel overwhelmed.... What making operation in America. might seem to be the secrets of The star here is really the stick engineering are in the common of cedar and graphite we take as well as in the uncommon, for granted. Every aspect of the in the small as in the large, in pencil—the graphite, the eraser, the seemingly simple as in the the shape, the color—is examined indubitably complex.” The Pencil thoroughly. Maybe a little too justifies this contention. Though much so, as Petroski can be long- the lead-pointed device seemingly winded and might have benefited sprang out of nowhere (it is from a more liberal application of photogrAphy first mentioned in a 1565 book an eraser. Nonetheless, The Pencil by timothy ArchibAld on fossils), Petroski traces its never loses sight of its point. o

www.spectrum.ieee.org July 2008 • IEEE SpEctrum • NA 43 Mirror Worlds; or, The Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox…How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean David Gelernter (Oxford University Press, 1991) to the field. Meanwhile, he built a successful computer illiam Gibson, in Neuromancer, introduced the software business around W concept of “cyberspace as place.” And another a dazzling program that sci-fi writer, Neal Stephenson, inSnow Crash, took pains performed complicated math. to explain how a computer-based world might work [see Using his own software and sidebar, “Favorite Fiction”]. But the prize for prescience funding his research with his goes to computer scientist David Gelernter, who in Mirror commercial bounty, Wolfram Worlds outlined how an alternative universe that reflected produced A New Kind of and interacted with physical reality would emerge. Though Science, a 1200-page behemoth he knew that the picture he drew had elements of the A new Kind of Science claiming that the lessons we Stephen Wolfram cyberpunk to it, he bristled at the idea that his vision (Wolfram Media, 2002) can learn from CA provide (as could be viewed as another version of Gibson’s matrix the title implies) no less than or Stephenson’s metaverse. “There is nothing science- a new, computation-based fictionish about these programs,” Gelernter wrote. The tephen Wolfram was more way to understand natural book was written before the Internet exploded, and parts s or less a traditional par- phenomena. His key point can seem dated. But time has proven it correct: our current ticle physicist when he came is that very simple cellular connected state—always on, perpetually blogged, and across the mathematical back- automata systems, using just geo-tagged—is beginning to look a lot like one of these water of cellular automata, or a few basic rules, can often mirror worlds. Consider this thought: “When you switch CAs—artificial, grid-based sys- display stunningly complex on your city Mirror World, the whole city shows up on tems that “behave” according behavior. That’s the basic your screen, in a single dense, live, pulsing, swarming to a set of rules that provide a melody running through picture.” Sound familiar? While assessing the direction sort of local physics. Sensing Wolfram’s symphony of of open services like Google Maps and Facebook, I keep that CAs would be helpful in findings and claims, and varia- returning to Mirror Worlds as the best way to understand answering some of the bigger tions on it lead him to explore how computational reality coexists and merges with the questions he was pondering, the relevance of his computer- physical world. o he shifted his scientific work based CA experiments in fields ranging from biology to social sciences. He even speculates that “underneath all the complex phenomena we see in physics there lies some simple program which, if run long enough, would reproduce our universe in every detail.” Whether or not you buy this, the book is a lushly illustrated and clearly written immersion into the mind and theories of a brilliant iconoclast. o ; SS ande c c m Gödel, escher, Bach: An

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44 NA • IEEE SpEctrum • July 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas ultrainnovative mentality. Graham, a self-described from the Computer Age computer nerd who made his fortune by writing the Paul Graham (O’Reilly, 2004) first Web-based application and selling it to Yahoo at the height of the first Internet boom, is blessed with hen I first discovered the amazing cohort an ability to analyze his own mind-set and explain it W known as computer hackers over 25 years to outsiders. To paraphrase a sentence in the book: ago, what impressed me most was their unfettered even though he is the water, he can see the wave. way of thinking. In order to come up with the Graham is so unabashedly geeky that, though he is coolest and most innovative programs, a hacker a natural writer, he can’t help but express himself must sweep away preconceived notions to come in metaphors drawn from what he calls “his native up with something new. This way of thinking also land, hacking.” (Typical sentence: “When you damp offers a powerful way of approaching the larger oscillations, you lose the high points as well as world, one that has charmed and instructed me the low.”) The book really sings when he analyzes as I continue to interview and understand these nonprogramming problems (building a business, wizards. Paul Graham’s small but power-packed understanding great design, mastering human collection of essays provides an inside view of that interaction) through his hacker’s eye. o www.spectrum.ieee.org July 2008 • IEEE SpEctrum • NA 45 called computers. Indeed, in addition to the sharp portraits of the designers, engineers, and managers who burned the midnight fluorescent light to create the Eclipse MV/8000 (code-named Eagle), Kidder walks his readers through a series of painlessly embedded tutorials on how such machines work. Typically, these are scenes where our avatar, Kidder, is receiving a lecture from one of the designers or micro- matical theories of Kurt Gödel, coders. In 2008, The Soul of the intricacies of Bach’s fugues, a New Machine works as a and the graphic ambiguities fascinating snapshot of a of artist M.C. Escher—punc- suddenly distant past. In tuated by a series of dialogues Kidder-land, Massachusetts in the spirit of Lewis Carroll? Route 128 is the white-hot What makes this a technol- center of the digital action, ogy book is that while its soul is ineluctably human, Gödel, Escher, Bach is also a romance about what the computer has helped us uncover—a larger way of viewing who we are, fueled by the questions raised by universal computation. If this sounds complicated, that’s because it is, but Douglas R. Hofstadter is relentlessly instructional. (Digging out my old copy of GEB to reacquaint myself with it, I found it stuffed The Design of everyday Things with scratch paper on which, Donald A. Norman (Basic Books, 1988; paperback reprint, 2002) 25 years ago, I worked out his various challenges.) As with time-sharing is king, and esign guru Donald A. Norman’s devastating critique James Joyce, Hofstadter’s ideal the concept of personal D of how engineers fail to make their creations reader is one willing to devote computers is worthy of but a comprehensible was originally called The Psychology of massive energy to decoding his single clause in one sentence. Everyday Things, a moniker he felt was clever, in that it was book. And as with Joyce, that What hasn’t changed, though, thought-provoking and acronymic (the first letters of each energy is rewarded. o are the corporate pressures word spell out poet). For the paperback edition, his editors and personal dramas that suggested the current title. Norman at first opposed it, but accompany almost every he changed his mind when the equivalent of a user study The Soul of a major project. By sticking to new Machine found that the original title was misleading (people thought Tracy Kidder (Little, his narrative and rendering it might be a self-help book). It was a great example of one Brown, 1981) it in elegant prose, Kidder of his big themes—creators should understand that their proves that unveiling the users are not necessarily the same as themselves. Writing t the time Tracy Kidder specific is still the best way at a time when such concepts were barely known to the a was collecting his to illuminate the bigger general public, Norman, a world-class crank, instructively National Book Award and picture. It’s no accident that, eviscerates the product design of doors, telephones, air- Pulitzer Prize for this blow- long after Data General and traffic systems, and computers by describing their design by-blow account of the the Eagle team’s ultimately flaws and how those flaws found their way to market. building of a Data General undistinguished computer Then he outlines how to solve those problems. In the two minicomputer, The Soul of a have faded into obscurity, the decades since this book’s appearance, Norman’s point New Machine was heralded as ultimate compliment to any of view has become widely adopted. Yet bad design still a must-read for anyone who book that chronicles a project persists, and this book should still be read both by those wanted to understand those is, “This is The Soul of a New who design products and those who use them. o strange and scary machines Machine of...” o

46 NA • IEEE SpEctrum • July 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org Favorite Fiction

Frankenstein; The beast is relentless in calling its creator to introduced the concept of “cyberspace as place,” or, The Modern Prometheus Mary Shelley task, at one point confronting the young man incidentally kicking off a sci-fi genre known as (First published, 1818; with a charge that yet reverberates in discus- cyberpunk. William Gibson created an iconic char- Penguin Classics edition, 2007) sions of today’s cutting-edge biotech: “How acter for the digital age: Case, a jaded hacker who dare you sport thus with life?” Though the literally drops into the computational maw. (He’s Technology’s original sin is the reckless novel is approaching its 200th birthday and a postmicrochip version of that classic educated- drive to invent despite the inevitability bears some of the over-the-top prose trade- man’s detective, Philip Marlowe.) Gibson’s dark of unintended, and often disastrous, marks of the Romantic era, it is still compelling Weltanschauung has persisted almost to the point of consequences. Born from a par- and unforgettable. Penguin Classics’ new edi- a cliché; movies like The Matrix would be unimagina- lor game among the elite literary figures of the early tion is not only meticulous in reproducing and annotat- ble without him. Yet his hardboiled linguistic panache 19th century, Frankenstein remains the definitive treat- ing Shelley’s text, but its covers and flaps also feature keeps Neuromancer fresh to this day. In Snow Crash, ment of that subject. It also became the mythic legacy comic-book artist Dan Clowes’s cool graphic Neal Stephenson writes in a of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wife (and soon after renderings of scenes from the novel. o looser tone—a mashup of Don writing this, widow) of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. DeLillo, Joseph Heller, and old The monster of the story is now generally regarded as comic books—and takes more sort of an animated Halloween costume, embodied Neuromancer pains to explain how a com- William Gibson (Ace Books, 1984) by the bolt-necked, grunting beast portrayed by Boris puter-based world might work. Snow Crash Karloff. (A variation of the movie monster is currently Neal Stephenson (Bantam Spectra, 1992) His metaverse (where a pizza tap dancing on Broadway in Young Frankenstein.) But delivery guy can become a in Shelley’s treatment, the creature is an articulate— A twofer fills this slot—two science-fiction celebrated sword warrior) has and ultimately more dreadful—creature whose murder- novels on the creation of computer-based become the standard-issue ous acts are a direct rebuke to the hubris of its creator. alternative worlds. It was Neuromancer that vision of alternative reality. o

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www.spectrum.ieee.orge08_ieee_178x121_ess_USA.indd 1 July 2008 • IEEE SpE09.06.2008ctrum • 15:05:36 NA 47 Uhr wealth of information that the The Codebreakers: The U.S. government attempted Story of Secret Writing to suppress the book. (As a




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48 NA • IEEE SpEctrum • July 2008 www.spectrum.ieee.org navigating the seas, motives of his eternal foe, sweeping but never sprawling, specifically in determining Royal Astronomer Nevil taking almost 300 pages to a ship’s longitude. Latitude, Maskelyne, might have been step through the advances in in contrast, is easy because portrayed as less vile. Sobel theoretical physics that made the imaginary horizontal wryly acknowledges that possible the desperate effort lines that band the Earth her narrative vessel lists to build a bomb. Another can be located by the toward caricaturization, 400 pages race through the interaction of the sun and noting that “a story that hails development itself. Not many Earth’s rotation. In outlining a hero must also hiss at a 700-page books can be called early attempts to solve the villain.” But her research is riveting, but this one can. By problem, Sobel ushers in sufficiently sound to keep her fully developing dozens of key Renaissance superstars storytelling on course. o figures—Bohr, Rutherford, Galileo, Cassini, Newton, and Oppenheimer, Teller, von Hooke. But the real drama Neumann—and often focusing begins with Harrison and on their inner conflicts his attempts to convince The Making of the between the excitement of the Board of Longitude— Atomic Bomb discovery and the dread Richard Rhodes (Simon an elite committee formed & Schuster, 1986) first paragraph whisks us cast by the knowledge of its by Parliament to award inside the head of physicist consequences, Rhodes casts a lucrative prize to the Leo Szilard, waiting in the an operatic spell. His deft han- first person who solved he creation of the world’s rain at a stoplight outside the dling of the political and mili- the problem—that his t most fearsome weapon— British Museum, as he grasps tary circumstances surround- seaworthy clocks provided a perhaps the ultimate tale of the possibility of a nuclear ing the effort is spliced with flawless means to determine how pure brainpower fused explosion. “A way to the sound science. In my edition, location. In the hands of a with engineering can lead future,” he mused, “death into five Nobel winners endorse more scholarly historian, to earth-shattering conse- the world and all our woe, the the author’s understanding. this might have been a quences—deserves no less shape of things to come.” Then In an audacious pitch to pen messier tale; Harrison than epic treatment. Richard comes a painstakingly explicit the definitive account of a might have been a less Rhodes provides just that in account of the carnage that massively important devel- saintly protagonist, and the a magisterial account whose would follow. The narrative is opment, Rhodes succeeds. o

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new ones on line. Nevertheless, the will decline. The ministry sheds the load Iraq Electricity, average daily power availability has with rolling blackouts. By the Numbers hardly increased. If provinces shared the load In 2005, 173 generating units at properly, even in midsummer, every It’s July in Iraq, and that means temper- 35 power plants were able to reliably province could have as much as atures nearing 54 ˚C, combined with produce about 5000 megawatts at peak 10 hours a day of electricity. But some a maddening talc-like silt that invades periods. Another 13 power plants and provinces simply take as much as eyes and teeth. The air-conditioning 262 units later, Iraq still has not reached they can at any given time. The result: works for only about 10 hours a day; 6000 MW, the stated goal for 2004. more blackouts and more downtime in Baghdad province, that number is What’s the problem? Insurgent attacks for the already beleaguered electrical closer to six. on the electrical grid and a failure of the system. Attacks on personnel have The United States has spent provincial authorities to cooperate. An also chilled progress. In early May, US $4.3 billion to help Iraq’s Ministry of electrical grid needs to be balanced: Hassan Kadhum Aziz, the Ministry of Electricity fix the country’s power grid, generation needs to keep up with the Electricity’s distribution directorate’s by resurrecting old plants and bringing load, otherwise voltage and frequency advisor, was assassinated. o

6000 Stated national goal: 6000 MW by July 2004

AVERAGE AMOUNT OF ELECTRICITY GENERATED, MEGAWATTS TYPE OF POWER: N Thermal N Combustion turbine N Hydro

5000

Mussayib Thermal 12.7% 4000

Nasiriyah Thermal 11.1% 3000 Rest of nation 33.9% Hartha Thermal 6.0% 2000 Bayji Thermal 4.4% Haditha Khor 1000 5.3% Zubar Mosul 6.9% Main Bayji source for 5.7% Gas all charts: Kirkuk Qudus 5.0% the brookings 4.4% 4.6% 0 institute

J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A 2005 2006 2007 2008

15 AVERAGE HOURS OF ELECTRICITY PER DAY 120 NUMBER OF DAILY INSURGENT ATTACKS IN IRAQ N BAGHDAD U.S. interim target: 10–12 hours N BAGHDAD N NATIONWIDE National target: 24 hours N REST OF NATION

100

12

80

9 60

40

6

20

3 0

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56 NA • iEEE SpEctrum • july 2008 WWW.SpECTrUM.IEEE.org